


exceptions to every rule

by Ponderosa (ponderosa121)



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019), The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Canon-Typical Violence, Cunnilingus, Daddy Kink, Dubious Consent, F/M, M/M, Multi, Oral Sex, Polyamory, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:20:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 30,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24484192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ponderosa121/pseuds/Ponderosa
Summary: Malcolm is separated from his team by a herd of zombies and ends up captured by the Saviors. The Saviors' leader, Negan, takes an immediate and keen interest in him for a few reasons, one of them being that he so clearly resembles the Hilltop community's scavenger. But any plans Negan might have to use him as a spy don't quite work out, and when Malcolm escapes to reunite with his team it may just lead to giving Hilltop and the other communities an advantage in the brewing war.[Merged timelines, so canon divergent from 2010 in PSon, and begins right before s7e7 in TWD.]
Relationships: Jesus (Walking Dead)/Malcolm Bright, Malcolm Bright/Dani Powell/JT Tarmel, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Negan (Walking Dead)/Malcolm Bright
Comments: 78
Kudos: 89





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Kate and Cosmic for all the cheerleading and encouragement on this! To be clear, Malcolm and Jesus are not the same person or related in this fic and they will be hooking up (sexually, not necessarily romantically).
> 
> Background pairings include some Desus and Malcolm in a polycule with the whole precinct squad. Malcolm begins the story as a hinge (he's sexually/romantically involved with everyone, however they're not necessarily involved with one another.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional content warnings for this chapter include some mild feminization (not for purposes of being degrading).

Even with the gates, the guards, and the fence lined with the dead, the former-factory-turned-compound is a great deal larger than Malcolm had first estimated. Inside, it’s a hub of activity, conversations echoing with the bustle of a marketplace erected upon what must’ve once been the factory floor. The men who’d caught him in the woods hadn’t bothered to hood or blindfold him after they pulled the pashmina off his head, and this place is too well-run for that to mean anything good. Malcolm wagers there’s little to no chance he’ll be able to talk them into releasing him.

He’s brought to a conference room where a man—presumably the one in charge—sits at the head of the table. If he’s not at the very top of the food chain, he’s certainly close. He’s probably in his late forties or early fifties. About a week’s worth of salt-and-pepper beard growth clings to his face. He has the air of a leader about him, with a mix of keen attention and casual arrogance in his expression. A bat wrapped in barbed wire rests ominously on the table in front of him; by the wear on the handle and the nicks in the barrel, the weapon has presumably seen plenty of use.

One of the goons keeps a hard grip on Malcolm’s arm as the other goes to report in, leaning down subserviently to speak into the man’s ear. With a combination of lip reading and keeping his ears pricked, Malcolm catches a good half of the words spoken in a low whisper, including what’s probably the man’s name.

Negan—if Malcolm’s gotten it right—waves the others away. He kicks back the chair, teetering on its two rear legs as the door closes and Malcolm’s left alone with him. He studies Malcolm for a long moment, his tongue tracing the edge of his teeth. 

“You trimmed your hair,” he says, voice rough at the edges, eyes shrewd. “And shaved the beard. I almost didn’t recognize you. If not for those big baby blues.”

Interesting. Mistaken identity certainly explains the reactions of the men who had surrounded him in the woods. Malcolm considers whether or not this could work in his favor when Negan drops his chair back down with a loud bang and stands. He grasps the handle of the bat and lazily circles the table, dragging it along behind him, the metal-on-metal making an awful, grating sound. When it slips off the table, Negan swings it up onto his shoulder with practiced ease.

“You know, I thought we made a real connection that night at Hilltop. Out of all the fine folks kissing the dirt, I thought that you and I understood one another, and how, exactly, this arrangement was going to work.”

Warily, Malcolm keeps his eyes on Negan’s. That’s the second time Hilltop has been mentioned. It could be an outpost, or a community, perhaps.

Coming within arm’s reach, Negan pauses, his weight rocking back on one heel. His eyes narrow as he looks Malcolm up and down. “You and I both know you could’ve just come right up to the door and knocked like a good neighbor. If you’re looking for a cup of sugar, darling, you know I would’ve given it to you. So, I have to ask myself, why the secrecy? Why all the sneaking around,” he makes a little walking gesture with his forefingers, “Gregory—that’s his name right?—he wouldn't send you to spy on Sanctuary and risk making me grumpy. He’d eat a handful of his own _turds_ to stay safe and cozy in that big house of his.”

Negan’s thumb on the handle of the bat shifts restlessly.

Lying is risky. The truth is also risky. It’s a toss of the coin either way.

“I think you have me confused with someone else,” Malcolm says. He closes his fingers into a fist to still their trembling.

Negan’s brow furrows. He scrapes his teeth over his lip and looks down his nose at Malcolm. “Do I, now.”

“Apparently, I have a twin, sir.”

“Wheee-ew,” Negan says, air whistling between his teeth. He rolls his neck and slides his gaze away from Malcolm to eye the wood of the bat. “Did you hear that, Lucille? ‘Sir,’ he says. Goddamn, but that’s some R-E-S-P-E-C-T level of respect, isn’t it?”

Malcolm risks gesturing, waving a hand towards the direction of the compound’s main floor. “Given the size of this place and its defenses, you’ve clearly earned it.”

“Oh, I’ve earned a lot of things,” Negan says. His fingers realign ominously on the handle of the bat. “But if you’re not who I think you are, Jeezy Creezy, boy, who the fuck are you?”

“My name is Malcolm Bright. I’m originally from New York—although that doesn’t really matter much these days, does it?” Malcolm says, going all in on the truth. “My friends and I are traveling south, and we were separated three days ago by a herd. I saw smoke, and thought it might’ve been them making camp, but as it turns out, it was this place. Sanctuary, you called it?”

When Negan moves, he strikes with the speed of a snake. Malcolm attempts to duck and move with it, but it’s not an attack—it’s an arm thrown around his shoulders. He flinches and freezes when Negan drags him close and presses a vicious grin against his temple. This close to ‘Lucille,’ he can see the dark stains of blood left between the wires and smell the lingering stink of the dead clinging to the wood.

“You are a smart fucking cookie, aren’t you, little Malcolm?”

“So I’ve been told,” Malcolm replies, carefully neutral. He tries not to think about what he’d done to the last man who’d called him ‘little Malcolm,’ the intruder he’d found in his mother’s house after she and Ainsley had fled the city, but he can still hear the man’s muffled sobbing in the back of his mind.

“Cookie, you don’t need to try and play coy with me. You have, indeed, found Sanctuary, and we are _always_ looking for new recruits for the Saviors. Now, I’ll tell you what I told your pretty boy lookalike over at Hilltop,” Negan says, falling silent for a moment, his breath warm against Malcolm’s skin. He huffs a soft laugh that is anything but reassuring before he whispers, “Normally, I’m a tits and pussy kind of guy, but _damn_ if I wouldn't make an exception for you.”

A shiver halfway borne of relief ripples through Malcolm. Negan isn’t suddenly any less dangerous in his eyes, but he can understand this dynamic without context. He can work with it. He lets his muscles relax a touch, slowly leans a little more—not eager, but willing—against Negan’s frame.

Negan’s cheeks pull tight into a grin again, and his hand skims down Malcolm’s back to cup the seat of his pants. Long fingers tease the seam disappearing between his legs.

“Mmmm mmm mmm! You’ve got a sweet little ass. Him, I’d put face down, but you, darling, you’re twice as pretty without all that hair on your face.”

Malcolm tips his chin up, catching Negan’s gaze at the corner of his eye. He lets his mouth fall slack and parts his legs slightly. The thud of the man’s heartbeat echoes into his arm, steady but rising. It mirrors his own. How many steps would there be from seduction to escape, he wonders. Or, perhaps he’s dreaming too small. Well-armed and defensible, if it’s not rotten to the core, this could be the sort of community that’d be worth trying to take the reins.

“Down, boy,” Negan chides and gives his ass a pat. He swings Lucille around and points her at the door. “Let’s give you a tour of the place first, shall we?”

*

Sanctuary is impressive. It’s a veritable small town with a sizable number of family units and a system of commerce.

“You grow your own food?” Malcolm asks as Negan leads him through a series of processing stations. A half-dozen people work on a loose assembly line cleaning and canning root vegetables.

“We’re trying, but the soil’s not ideal. We trade for it.”

“In exchange for security, I imagine,” Malcolm guesses, speaking euphemistically. It would explain the apparent mafia-style power structure. With the rules he’s put in place, Negan sits at the top of a very large pyramid ruled both by fear and the illusion of safety. No one’s clearly happy about the conditions, but no one has a better idea.

“Sanctuary means sanctuary,” Negan says. His hand finds the small of Malcolm’s back again as he steers them off the factory floor towards what appear to be living quarters. Some of the doors are decorated with small tokens like any apartment building. “You think you wanna stay?”

“Absolutely. My friends are still out there somewhere, though,” Malcolm replies. He pauses for a beat before aiming a demure look Negan’s way. “But if they see the same signs of civilization that I did, they’ll find their way here.”

“Tell me, cookie, you ever wanted to get married?”

Malcolm hides his confusion at the non sequitur. “Once upon a time.”

“Marriage is a fine institution, but I’ve made a few improvements,” Negan says. He hooks a thumb into the pocket of his jeans as they turn and stroll down a long, faceless hallway. His tongue licks at the corner of his mouth, and it doesn’t take a profiler to know what he’s thinking about.

In truth, he’s not exactly far from Malcolm’s type, physically; it’s the rest of him that’s a touch objectionable.

“Improvements? How so?”

“Why have one ball and chain, when you can have half a dozen ready-and-willing wives? I am a man with a strong libido and a varied appetite.”

“Polygamy is a hardly novel improvement,” Malcolm points out, the words tumbling out of him before he can catch them. He winces inwardly and tries to soften them by adding: “Historically speaking.”

 _“Hardly novel...”_ Negan repeats. His teeth dig into his lip as he spins around to eyeball Malcolm all over again. “Oh, you’re not just smarter than the average bear, son, you are motherfucking _educated_. You said New York, now let me guess: Columbia.”

Malcolm cocks an eyebrow. “Close.”

“Oh, I love a good guessing game,” Negan purrs. He steps in, backs Malcolm up against the wall until there’s hardly any space left between them. “Close, huh? Ivy League, maybe? Were you a rich boy once upon a time?”

“Once.”

“Family money?” Negan flips Lucille around, hooking the base of the handle into the waist of Malcolm’s pants. He gives it a tug, peering down with lewd curiosity, though there’s nothing to be seen with the length of Malcolm’s tee still clinging to the flat of his stomach “... old money?”

“Yes, and… yes,” Malcolm says, a bit of surprise leaking into his tone. Is it that Negan is remarkably perceptive or just good at guessing?

He settles a hand on Malcolm’s hip and leans down to whisper right in his ear. “Were you a ‘took it between the thighs at boarding school’ kind of old money rich boy?”

An electric sizzle races up Malcolm’s spine. “Boarding school, yes,” he says, staying carefully still. “But I wasn’t exactly a popular enough kid to get laid. College was a different story. Did you still want to make that guess?”

Negan pulls back to stare directly into Malcolm’s eyes. “Yale.”

Malcolm smirks. “Harvard.”

“Damn!” Negan says, stomping his heel as he peels away, shockingly good-natured in losing the mental coin toss. He resumes leading Malcolm through the warren of hallways. “A Harvard man. Here I was hoping my bride-to-be would spill all the juicy shit about those Skull and Bones secret society conspiracy theories.”

“Sorry, no secret societies in my past.” Just plenty of secrets, Malcolm thinks, following along and still working overtime to try and profile Negan. “So, you don’t want me to work for you, or simply have a bit of, uh, fun… you want me to marry you?”

“Well, all three makes for a super sweet package deal. But it’s a choice I’m giving you, not an ultimatum, cookie. No rape in Sanctuary is a hard and fast rule for every single one of my people. My soldiers obey me, and my wives, well, they don’t obey me so much as they make themselves available, if you get my drift. They get the best food, the best beds, and the best damn entertainment that Sanctuary has to offer, and all they have to do is promise not to engage in any hanky-panky behind my back.”

“Sounds like a good deal.”

“Oh, it is. And if you’ll have me, Malcolm Bright,” Negan says, and opens the door to what is obviously a harem, “let me show you to your new quarters.”

*

In the interest of self-preservation and a soft bed, Malcolm finds himself the newest of Negan’s wives. Negan introduces him to the women and ends the tour by giving him a slow, lingering kiss that is as much a demonstration as it is a test. 

“Remember, wife is a state of mind,” Negan says, murmuring the words straight against his mouth. “Be good and show the new boy the ropes, girls,” he adds, smacking Malcolm on the ass before leaving him in their care.

“I’ve been told I resemble someone,” Malcolm says, unsure if the stunned gawking is another case of mistaken identity or if he’s the first man Negan’s shown interest in. He gnaws on his lip knowing he’s encroaching on what is, in many ways, a safe space for these women. One look at them and he can tell that nearly all of them aren’t truly here because they want to be. Like him, most of them have obviously made the only choice available to them to save their own skin.

After a moment of sizing him up, one of them waves him over and tells him to follow her.

“Sherry, right?” he says, having done his best to fix names to faces as Negan had rattled them off spitfire. Just as with Negan, she has an air about her. If there’s a leader amongst the women, it’s her.

“Good memory,” she says. She takes him out of the main lounging room to yet another hallway, taking him, first, to what will be his quarters before showing him where the shared bathroom and showers are. “We can send your clothes to the wash while you get cleaned up, and in the meantime, welcome to the Wardrobe.”

Malcolm looks around an entire room full of scavenged clothes sorted by size, color, and type. Amongst the racks and piles are a few mannequins modeling evening wear, stacks of lingerie, boxes of jewelry overflowing like treasure chests. 

“Not sure we have much in here that’s suitable for you, or how Negan wants you to dress, but you should be able to find something that’ll fit until we can get a seamstress to make something to his specifications.”

“Any suggestions?” Malcolm asks. Most of the piles appear to be various dresses or flimsy blouses. “If these have all been chosen to his taste, it seems to run towards elegant and extremely feminine.”

Sherry digs through a box and comes up with a couple pairs of booty shorts. “Maybe one of these? Unless you’d rather try on a dress….”

“I was never into the drag scene,” Malcolm murmurs, accepting the pair of black cutoffs and holding them up to his waist. They’ll fit well enough. He snags a halter top with a ruched front off a hanger to go with it. “And I’m betting Negan isn’t, either.”

“Negan is full of surprises,” Sherry says. There’s a bitter undertone to her words.

Malcolm takes his time browsing to let that sink in before casting a thoughtful look at Sherry. “Does he treat you well? The wives, I mean. Us, I guess.”

“Mostly, but not always. He has moods like any man.”

“Any advice?”

Sherry’s eyes are flat and dangerous. “Don’t ever cross him.”


	2. Chapter 2

In the room that’s been retrofitted with a shower, Malcolm finds what must be a communal safety razor. He fits in a new blade and shaves for the first time in over a week before taking what feels like a sinfully long shower. Indoor plumbing seems like something out of a fairytale; it’s been so long since he’s had a spray cascade over him that wasn’t either the tepid pressure of a camp shower hung from the back of their vehicle or the punishing rush of a natural waterfall.

Toweling himself off, he gets dressed before he ends up tempted to step in for another ten minutes. The shorts are very high and very snug, but at least they don’t restrict his range of motion. He slips on the top, tugging it down into place over damp skin. He checks his reflection in the mirror. The halter accentuates the sweep of his collarbones and broadens his shoulders. It’s really not all that different than dressing for a club, something else that he hasn’t thought about for a long, _long_ time.

Malcolm joins the other wives for dinner, and they welcome him with a warmth that indicates they’ve been talking about him and he’s been given Sherry’s stamp of approval. As they eat, he asks them about their background and listens attentively before telling them a little about his own. He obviously omits any mention of his father and his career in law enforcement, but subtly lets them know he has training in self-defense. Hopefully, one of them will ask him for lessons before he escapes.

That’s a point on which he’s now made up his mind. If the dinner conversation has revealed anything to him, it’s that Negan has successfully brainwashed enough soldiers that it’d take a bloodbath to pull him out of power. By the time he’s settling into his new private quarters, any notion he’d had of figuring out how to wrest control of Sanctuary seems unfeasible.

Malcolm figures it will take four or five days to be awarded the same freedom of movement as the other wives. Once he’s earned that, escape is a matter of timing. But leaving without knowing where Gil and the others are is the real risk. He’d still need to find them again, and Negan would certainly send out a search party. JT, alone, carries enough firepower on him at all times to face down a squad of men, but there’s a veritable army at Negan’s disposal.

He’s sequestered away with a book chewing on the problem when a little shave-and-a-haircut knock sounds at his door.

“Come in,” he says, although the handle turns even before he offers the invitation.

Negan enters with a bottle of bourbon tucked under his arm and the ever-present bat in his hand. He kicks the door shut with his heel and wolf whistles at the sight of Malcolm sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed. “Hello, nurse!”

Closing his book, Malcolm’s pulse kicks up. A trickle of adrenaline enters his system.

There’s a flash of pink as Negan’s tongue rolls out over his lip, and he goes to the cabinets above the small kitchenette to pull out a matching pair of tumblers. He pulls out the bottle’s cork with his teeth and spits it onto the counter. “Damn, I knew you’d clean up nice, but mmph. Look at you,” he says, bending back and tossing a glance over his shoulder as he pours each of them a glass. “Ain’t he a sight, Lucille? What a pretty boy all dolled up for Daddy.”

“Did I pick well?” Malcolm asks. He extends a leg out as he twists to set his book on the nightstand.

Negan unzips the front of his jacket before grabbing up the glasses between the fingers of one hand and taking a seat at the edge of the bed. “You picked very well, darlin’,” Negan purrs, his gaze traveling hungrily down to Malcolm’s mouth to his throat and then wandering over the sweep of his collarbone. As Malcolm takes one of the glasses, Negan lays Lucille across his lap. It’s difficult to say whether or not it’s meant as a threat or if his obsession with the object is compulsive to the point that he simply can’t bear to be apart from it for long. “Why don’t you make a little toast to celebrate our honeymoon.”

Malcolm raises his glass, breath coming a little faster as he struggles to find the right words. “To a—a happy and mutually beneficial marriage.”

“A little stuffy there, cookie—you weren’t a lawyer, were you? I’ll take it, I suppose… Only seems fair seeing as _you’ll_ be taking it in a second,” Negan adds, his mouth spreading into a sleazy grin. He clinks their glasses together and licks the rim before tossing it back with a roughly whispered, “Bottoms up.”

Malcolm takes a sip rather than knocking it back. It’s not bad stuff. Hard liquor after not drinking much of anything for a couple years now is like a kick in the teeth. It burns, and the fire feels like it goes straight into his blood.

“You make friends with all the other wives?” Negan asks, putting aside his empty glass to lean towards Malcolm. He extends his forefinger and drags the back of his nail down the front of Malcolm’s shirt.

“We had dinner and got to know one another a little.”

“If you like pussy, too, maybe sometime you can really get to know ‘em.” Negan’s tongue presses to the edge of his teeth as his finger dips into one of the swooping folds in Malcolm’s top and follows the crease. “Lucille, here, she’s no stranger to threesomes. She’s had a taste of each and every one of my wives. Now, you may look at her and say, ‘But, Negan, she’s a fighter, not a lover;’ well, cookie, you’re right as rain, but every once in a while, even a bloodthirsty gal like Lucille needs to be laid down, spoken real sweet to, and reminded of just how good it is to get fucked.”

By now, Negan’s wandering finger has found and teased Malcolm’s nipple to a hard point.

“Is she going to join us, or is she going to watch?” Malcolm asks warily.

Negan gives Malcolm’s nipple a hard tweak. “She’ll sit this one out, but watch? Hell. She’s a fucking baseball bat, she doesn’t have eyes,” he says, and props Lucille against the wall. He takes Malcolm’s whisky back and finishes it off, abandoning the glass and rapidly stripping off his leather jacket. By the look of him, he’d probably carried more muscle when he was a younger man, but now he’s lean like a wolf, long-limbed and sharp-toothed. Rangy and vicious. He crawls onto the bed, knee nudging crudely between Malcolm’s thighs as Malcolm sinks into the mattress beneath him.

Somewhere out in the wilderness, the others would be making camp: JT taking up first watch while the others huddle down together to sleep. They’d come so far and been through so much. Had gotten so close in the years since the world turned inside out. Malcolm feels strange to be separated from them and, even with the circumstances, a bit guilty at the creature comforts surrounding him.

“Are you thinking about your friends?” Negan asks. He nudges Malcolm’s mouth with his own, nips at his lip before tilting his head to the other side and doing it again.

He must’ve had a faraway look in his eyes. “We’ve been together a long time. It’s strange not knowing where they are,” Malcolm says, bringing his hands to Negan’s sides as he flicks his tongue out to swipe across Negan’s lips. The bonds are deeper than blood. All that loss they’d suffered—that he’d suffered—and somehow he’d found a way to fit amongst them. 

Negan works a hand up under Malcolm’s shirt, his broad palm sweeping up and dragging the soft fabric with it. He noses at Malcolm’s jaw, whiskers tickling along with his breath. “You want me to send out a search party, darlin’?” he murmurs.

An offer like that comes with a lot of strings attached. Even if he weren’t planning to escape, bringing the others here would be a mistake. None of them aside from Edrisa would be able to tolerate the way Negan rules the roost. Gil especially. It’d be like putting flame to a tinderbox.

“No. If they don’t find their way here, they’ll move on.”

Callused fingers find Malcolm’s nipple again, give a hard pinch and a tug that draws a gasp out of him. “You’re not trying to deprive Daddy of new recruits, are you?” Negan asks, his voice a scatter of broken glass. A minefield to step through.

Malcolm makes a quiet sound as teeth scrape his skin. He shakes his head and slips his hands under the hem of Negan’s tee. “Not at all,” he says. His trembling fingers trace the skin above Negan’s waistband. Despite himself, a part of him is eager to learn the shape of the man’s cock. “But it’s our honeymoon, isn’t it? So I ought to have Daddy all to myself.”

“Talking like that, you’re gonna make Lucille jealous.”

Malcolm thumbs open the button of Negan’s jeans. “Good thing she doesn’t have eyes, then,” Malcolm replies, only recognizing after a heartbeat that the shift in Negan’s breath isn’t anticipation but anger.

“No she does not, but she has feelings,” Negan snarls, each word bitten off harder than the last. His palm on Malcolm’s chest presses down to pin him in place, and there’s hellfire in the inky void of his pupils when he gets his other hand on Malcolm’s throat. “Now, you apologize for making fun.”

Malcolm’s eyes go wide. So, it’s not just an obsession, it’s a full-blown delusion. Lover, maybe. Wife. Someone close to Negan who he can’t let go of. “I’m sorry,” Malcolm grinds out. “I didn’t mean to make fun of her, I was only playing.”

The dig of Negan’s fingers beneath Malcolm’s jaw eases up a touch. “I don’t think she believes you,” Negan says, forcing Malcolm’s head to the side to look at the bat. “Lucille, do you believe in your heart that little Malcolm here is sorry?”

There’s no doubt that countless dead had met their end at that tangle of wire and wood, but how many people had lost their lives to Negan’s madness? The bit of lustful pleasure that had started to warm Malcolm’s skin fades beneath a creeping chill.

“How can I prove it to you? To her?”

Negan releases his hold on Malcolm’s throat to grab the bat. He sits back on his heels and hefts it, the wood sliding with a whisper through his palm until he’s gripping it near the snarl of wire at the barrel. He runs the end of it from Malcolm’s temple down his face until the knob digs into the soft flesh of his cheek.

“You can start by giving her a kiss and saying sorry like you mean it.”

Half measures won’t cut it. Not with the fever that runs in Negan’s blood. He might refer to it by the name of some long-dead woman, but the bat is an extension of himself. Malcolm drops his gaze, penitent, and says, “Yes, sir,” as he turns to put his lips to the smooth maplewood. “Yes, Daddy.”

His lips brush the handle, stained dark with sweat and use. “Forgive me, Lucille. I should’ve known better,” Malcolm says, whispering to her softly, sweetly. He lets his voice quaver, a hint of calculated fear in there to satisfy as he presses kisses to her. “I didn’t mean to insult you. Either of you.” He raises his gaze back to meet Negan’s, lips parted, sticking and catching against the wood as he drags his mouth over the handle.

Negan makes a low, lustful sound.

Rolling his tongue out, Malcolm fights down the urge to gag as he swipes a lick against the wood. Thankfully there’s only a bitter salt-sweat tang blossoming on his tongue as he curls it around the handle.

“Ooh, she likes that,” Negan says, sliding a hand down his front to finish opening his pants. He palms himself through his shorts as he watches Malcolm drop butterfly kisses between more cooing apologies. “Not as much as she likes caving in a skull, because let’s be honest, nothing beats the wet crunch of cracking open some poor sap’s noggin like a watermelon.” He shuffles his knees wider, forcing Malcolm’s legs to spread as he pulls his dick out one-handed. “I’m not sure she’s forgiven you yet, cookie, but it’s a start.”

Slowly, Malcolm moves his hands towards his belly. When Negan doesn’t react negatively, Malcolm undoes the button-fly of his cut-offs and rubs his cheek against Lucille’s handle like it’s a cock pressed against his face. He lifts his hips to slide them down his thighs, knees forced together by the unforgiving trap of black denim.

Negan strokes himself as he watches, angling the handle of the bat to mirror the hard jut of his cock. There’s a part of Malcolm that can’t help but remember the lectures he’d attended before the world began to crumble. His professors would’ve had a field day with a transitional object rooted so heavily in the phallic, and the instructors at Quantico would’ve been just as fascinated.

He kisses the knob end, chaste at first before dropping sucking kisses to the wood as he lifts his knees to his chest and wriggles out of the shorts. “I want to be a good wife,” Malcolm says as he tosses the cut-offs to the side and lets his legs fall wide. He grips the inside of his thigh with one hand and cups his balls with the other, gathering them up to give Negan a look at his hole, freshly-shaven like his face.

Malcolm forces his muscles to relax, but every inch of his body feels tense. He’s not quite as vulnerable as he appears, but he’s at a gross disadvantage if a switch flips inside Negan and the offer of a willing body to fuck into isn’t as appealing as the chance to beat a man to a pulp.

“Please let me show Lucille how good I can be for Daddy,” Malcolm says, the spark of wantonness lit again. He turns his face back towards the bat, not mirroring the rub of his face against a cock but pressing his cheek against it intimately like a lover. Slowly, his cock hardens, filling out and twitching away from his belly as he drops another kiss on Lucille.

Negan’s thinking it over, some sort of mental tally going on behind the scenes.

In the end, the scales seemingly tip in Malcolm’s favor, and Negan fishes out a little jar of vaseline from his back pocket. “Grease up, pretty boy,” he says, pulling Lucille away from Malcolm’s face and hefting the bat into a proper grip. He gives her a few swings before blowing her a kiss and setting her on his shoulder. He spits into his palm and fists his dick with a backhand grip, letting an obscene groan ripple into the air as he fucks into his hand. “It’s been a while since I did someone up the shitter, and I’m not gonna lie, cookie, when it’s that tight, Daddy doesn’t always last all that long.”

Since the man hasn’t exactly been subtle about it, Malcolm dips a shoulder in a shrug and lets his gaze flick wordlessly to Lucille.

“You dirty little minx,” Negan says, smirking. He drops Lucille to the bed beside them and grabs the hem of his tee to strip it off overhead. His chest down to his belly is scattered dark with hair, sinewy muscles rippling beneath the patches as he stretches his triceps like he’s warming up for a fight. “That is some kinky fucking shit, boy.”

“Good kinky or bad kinky?” Malcolm asks.

 _“Nasty_ kinky, like ending the train on a slut at a glory hole,” Negan says. He drops down over Malcolm again, his fingers shockingly tender as he brushes the hair away from Malcolm’s forehead and kisses him. “Smart, sassy, sexy as hell... boy, I better not regret bringing you in here.”

“You won’t, Daddy,” Malcolm lies. With deft fingers, he slicks up the length of Negan’s cock.

“Good. ‘Cause I’ve got plans for that pretty face of yours. I like the preppy look, but no more shaving after tonight.”

Of course. Of course he’d want to trade in on Malcolm’s looks. Whoever it is that he so strongly resembles, if he’s as well-known as he seems, for Negan to have a double to parade around—or even send in as a spy—makes Malcolm extremely valuable.

Which also makes the likelihood that Negan is going to snap and kill him that much more unlikely. He’s unhinged, there’s no doubt about it, but so far he’s been extremely calculated. You don’t make it to where he is without a certain level of restraint.

“Are you going to make me spy for you?” Malcolm asks, opting not to pretend he hasn’t guessed.

“Depends on how good you are in the sack.” Negan grabs the pillow out from under Malcolm’s head. He rises up on his knees again to cram it under Malcolm’s ass, taking hold of Malcolm’s hips and hauling him down. “And how good you are at spying. You’re going to make friends with the other girls, and we’ll see how useful you are to Daddy.”

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s my boy,” Negan purrs.

He smacks his cock against the crease of Malcolm’s thigh, each strike of hot flesh sending a livewire current through Malcolm’s nervous system. Malcolm shivers under Negan’s rapt attention, the razor sharp gleam in the man’s gaze as he watches himself aim the head of his cock at Malcolm’s hole and ease his hips forward.

Malcom’s breath catches in his throat as Negan pushes into him slow and steady. Negan’s soft huff of breath doesn’t quite become a laugh, but there’s a triumph there, a _claiming_ as his eyes skip up to find Malcolm’s before jumping back to watch the head of his cock get swallowed up.

“Darlin’, you are something else,” Negan says, his gaze going heavy-lidded as he sinks deeper into Malcolm. He hooks his hands under Malcolm’s legs, his knees inching forward to grind into him. 

The stretch isn’t unpleasant—the opposite, really. It feels infinitely better than it should. Malcolm had expected Negan to be rough, to make it easy to not like the gritty push of a cock up into him, but he’s as tender as JT is in the dark of the night, as steady and sure of himself as Gil. Malcolm swallows, trying desperately not to make comparisons, but it’s impossible not to.

“Is it good, Daddy?”

“It is so good, baby doll. If only you had a pair of nice juicy titties to go with your sweet little boypussy, I might not ever leave this room. _Unf._ I must admit that I am liking the jiggle of your junk, cookie. Lucille knows how much I enjoy getting my wives so wet they’re dripping on my dick—hell, even a lady like her gets thirsty for some sloppy pussy once in a while—but there’s nothing like a rock-hard boner staring back at you to know you’re doing something right.”

Negan snaps his hips in a few quick shallow thrusts to make Malcolm’s cock thump against the flat of his belly then throws his head back. “Goddamn!” he howls, as his head whips back to pin Malcolm with a ravenous look. “Look at that pretty pecker of yours bounce. Maybe I ought to have you ride me, instead. ’Course, then I couldn’t watch you come all over yourself, now could I?”

He shifts his hold on Malcolm’s legs, inviting Malcolm to hook them around him, instead. Malcolm does, gladly, and the slide out makes him arch up in anticipation for the thrust back in, the push that from this angle is going to hit him perfectly.

“Tell Daddy how much you love his dick,” Negan says, fucking into him steadily again, each thrust driving a sound out of his throat.

“It’s perfect, Daddy. I love that you’re fucking me,” he says between harsh, rasping breaths. He has fistfuls of bedding in his hands as Negan rocks into him, and if the man wants to see him come, it won’t take long at all. He’s so lost in the pressure building up with each thrust into him that he doesn’t recognize that Negan dropping down onto one wrist isn’t for leverage, but to grasp the handle of the bat.

Malcolm freezes when Negan rises with it in his hand, hips still moving rhythmically as he aims the scarred barrel of it square at Malcolm’s face. “Now, tell Lucille how much you love getting fucked by Daddy’s dick,” he says. His tongue sneaks out to lick at the edge of his upper lip, his cheeks dimpling as he watches Malcolm squirm.

The smell sunk into the wood is nauseating, and yet, somehow, Malcolm finds his hips bucking, desperately meeting the peak of Negan’s thrusts. It’s like the thrill of fighting in the middle of a cluster of walkers with teeth snapping near your ear, or the awful satisfaction of taking apart a body with the sort of lethal precision The Surgeon would approve of.

“It feels so good in me, so good,” Malcolm says, lifting his head, lips close to touching the tip of the bat. He stares down the length of it to where Negan’s hand curls tight around the grip, the veins standing out in sharp relief around the bony ridges of his knuckles. “I love being filled up and fucked. My hole belongs to Daddy, now,” he promises, “to Negan.”

“Your tight little boypussy.”

“My tight little boypussy belongs to you,” Malcolm repeats, gaze lifting to meet Negan’s. He’s never liked the phrase, but somehow saying it back to the man makes his body clench tight, seize up with a nasty sort of pleasure.

“Please, Lucille,” Malcolm murmurs, “ask Daddy if he’ll let me come.”

“What do you think, honey,” Negan says, flipping her up to gaze lovingly at the snarl of barbed wire. He fucks Malcolm quick and shallow for a time then switches his grip on Lucille again to send her into a pendulum swing that sends a whoosh of air over Malcolm’s belly. “Yeah, sweetheart, you can come on Daddy’s dick.”

Malcolm licks his lips and inches his hands down his belly. He might be confident he’s too valuable for Negan to kill, but he still can’t quite predict how Negan will respond to things. The way he’s holding the bat, it could be that he intends to drive it into Malcolm’s stomach and force the wind out of him. “May I touch myself, sir?” Malcolm asks, his fingers splaying wide over the flat of his abdomen. A few strokes and he could get off.

“No, you may not,” Negan says, a hard thrust matching each word. He grinds in deep and holds in place, challenging Malcolm with a dark stare to do the same.

Malcolm can feel Negan’s cock swell inside him as he lowers Lucille slowly and deliberately. There’s only a single wire wrapped over the end, one barbed spur that could pierce into him. Malcolm’s breath catches in his throat as a shot of terror courses through him, but Negan is precise in his aim and it’s only wood that meets the hot, blood-thickened skin of his cock.

A red-hot ripple of lust follows the weight of the bat, makes his cock swell and twitch as it’s pinned against his belly.

“Don’t worry, cookie, it’s just the tip,” Negan says with a rasping laugh.

It’s hard to hold still as Negan begins to move, as the stuttering of his hips makes it impossible not to notice every single shift of the bat. Malcolm can’t tear his eyes away from the blunt end of it pressed against him, the way he’s still so hard his cock is purpled and shining, a pressure building beneath the unforgiving wood and the drive of Negan’s cock inside him.

Malcolm is so distracted by the threat of the barbed wire—how easily the bat could slip and scrape and poison his blood—that he sees the sudden twitch of his cock and the first pulse of come oozing out onto his belly before he feels it. Then he’s gasping and shuddering and trying to stay still as each wave floods out of him. Until there’s a pool of white shivering at his navel and Negan is lifting Lucille away to watch it quiver at the peak of each thrust.

“Holy shit, boy, how long have you been storing up that load? Have you even gotten laid since things went sideways?” Negan asks. He drops Lucille beside them again to hook his hands under Malcolm’s knees and fuck into him harder, quick and fast and looking for nothing but his own release.

Mouth fallen open and his nerves a wild jangle of pleasure and relief, Malcolm doesn’t answer. He can’t even begin to figure out what to say, not when Negan is slamming into him, shredding his breath into gasps that fills the air between the rhythmic slap of their bodies. Negan’s attention has moved on, no longer caring about how Malcolm reacts and only about how he feels. The man’s head is tipped back, long throat stretched taut as his own breath is lost to quiet grunts.

Negan lets out an explosive groan when he loses it, and even without the sound loud as gunshot, Malcolm can feel the hard throb of Negan unloading into him. A shiver of pleasure skitters along his skin like an echo at every swell that stretches him wider.

With one last thrust and a satisfied groan, Negan rolls his head to the side, cracking his neck with a loud pop. “Good gravy, I haven’t come that hard since Tanya first gave me the pinky slip.”

He watches himself pull out then drops Malcolm’s knees and skims the lingering come off his dick. He wipes it on his thigh as Malcolm shifts to prop himself up on his elbows.

“So, am I worth keeping?” Malcolm asks.

Negan hitches up his pants as he gets off the bed. “Time will tell,” he says. He scratches his belly before he rescues his shirt off the floor and tugs it back on. “No wandering around without an escort, yet. Stick with another one of my wives if you want a better look at Sanctuary.”

Malcolm picks up Lucille and reaches across himself to hold her out to Negan, grip first. “Anyone in particular you want me to stay close to?”

“Cookie, are you aiming to become my favorite?” Negan asks, chuckling. He shrugs back into his jacket before taking the bat back. “You work your charm on Sherry, darlin’. I’m starting to think she’s getting a little big for her britches.”


	3. Chapter 3

Over the next two days, Malcolm gets to know Negan’s wives fairly well. With their relative boredom and the novelty of his arrival, they open up to him quicker than they otherwise might.

They also waste no time in asking him to teach them a little about self-defense. He gladly agrees, with some concessions. He might have been allowed inside the Harem, but he’s still careful to insist that he not engage in physical contact with any of them without Negan’s permission—one or more of the wives could have been instructed to spy on him in turn, and Negan’s soldiers check in regularly on patrol.

With Tanya’s help, Malcolm clears out one corner of the Wardrobe and arranges a mannequin as a stand-in.

“Let’s say you’re pinned to a wall,” he begins, and crowds the mannequin with his body. “If your attacker is alive, your goal is to get free and slow them down so you can run. I’ll show you how to break the hold—it’s easier than you may think—but you’ll want to remember those same three primary targets that we talked about last night: Face, throat, groin.”

He motions to himself as he moves into secondary targets like the solar plexus or knees then puts his back to the wall and sets the mannequin in the place of the attacker as he explains how to slide an arm up and twist to force a man’s arm free if you’re being caged in or choked. It’s not the most elegant or effective way to do a demo, but the other wives seem to get the gist.

He illustrates the break again from the attacker’s point of view then partners the women together and talks them through each motion until all of them know how to break away from being cornered. It’s rewarding watching them improve, and several of them display the sort of coordination that shows real promise at hand-to-hand combat.

In another life maybe, if he’d finished his training, he could’ve spent a few years in the field and come back to teach at Quantico.

It’s not often that he dwells on what might have been, but this is the first time since the outbreak that he’s been separated from Gil and the others for more than a day. The first time since he’d made the choice to save their lives and get them out of the city when all of them had wanted to stay and fight against increasingly overwhelming odds. He thought they’d never forgive him for drugging them with ketamine, of all things, but after what happened to Jackie....

He pushes that thought away as he shows the women what to do differently if cornered by a walker whose bite you need to avoid and who doesn’t care about overextended joints or a stomp to the instep. After the lesson is over, Tanya and Pauline are energized, talking animatedly with the others as they file out to go back to the main lounge.

Malcolm, despite smiling softly to himself, is a little more somber. Frankie sticks around to help him put the Wardrobe back in order and gives him a pat on the arm before ducking out to let him have a bit of privacy. The dark cloud lingers, and he finds himself carefully refolding the bits of clothing that remind him most of Jackie and of his sister. He chooses to believe that Ainsley is still alive out there, somewhere, but he wonders if he’d even recognize her if they met again. She was only fourteen the last time he’d seen her.

When the melancholy of some of his worst memories fade, Malcolm emerges and finds Sherry has been waiting for him in the hall. She holds a pack of off-brand Marlboro’s in her hand and suggests they go for a walk.

If Malcolm had intended to truly spy for Negan, this would be his chance. Her body language as they make their way outside for a bit of fresh air says she intends to bring him into her confidence. She's hesitant and hopeful in equal measure, and it dawns upon him that she’s showing him where they keep vehicles gassed and ready.

He declines an offered cigarette.

“You’re not planning on sticking around, are you?” Sherry says, words muffled as she cups her hand around the cigarette to light it. She perches on the seat of a motorcycle and breathes out a thin stream of smoke.

“What makes you say that?”

She doesn’t answer.

“I have people out there,” Malcolm confesses as the silence stretches. “Good people who are worried about me. My partners. My… family. I need to get back to them.”

“You’re not the only one,” she says, but the way she carefully fixes the hem of her skirt as she speaks gives him the sense that she isn’t referring to herself. Something is weighing on her.

“On second thought, can I?”

“Sure.”

Malcolm smiles in thanks as Sherry hands over the pack and the lighter. He was only a smoker briefly, back in the days of teenage rebellion, but he wagers that she’ll appreciate the camaraderie.

She does. Her tension eases visibly as he lights up, and eventually, after fifteen minutes of scattered small talk, she asks, “Has anyone given you a tour of the floor where Negan and his lieutenants live?”

“Not yet.”

“In case Negan wants you to entertain anyone, it’ll be good for you to where it is,” she says, and drops the cigarette butt onto the pavement. She grinds it out under the point of her shoe. 

“Not sure I’m going to be in big demand with any of his soldiers,” Malcolm replies. So far, he hasn’t seen an openly gay couple in the building, and most of the looks his way have been steeped in subtle but sneering homophobia. Negan though, feared as he is, sits above the law and the general consensus Malcolm picks up is that the man can fuck whomever he wants; it’s Malcolm they all look down on. Malcolm stubs his cigarette out on the wall, enough left above the filter to hand it back to her for later. 

“Doesn’t hurt to be prepared,” Sherry says. She lays a hand on his arm as she adds, “Pay attention to the turns. It’s easy to get lost between here and there.”

*

On day three, Malcolm makes another visit to the floor where Negan and his lieutenants live. He pays attention to the route Frankie leads him on, noting how she consciously avoids the stairwell that leads to the well-patrolled hallway that Sherry had referred to as home to Sanctuary’s “classrooms.” Sherry had laid her hand on one door in particular as she explained that they had no children under twelve on site, so these rooms were for the purpose of teaching special new arrivals about the benefits the Saviors bring to the communities, and occasionally for re-educating members about the rules.

It hadn’t been difficult to read between the lines and recognize that Negan had instituted an extremely effective system of solitary confinement in service of breaking and indoctrinating recruits.

As they move further away from that area, Malcolm wonders who in Frankie’s life had gotten shoved into one of those rooms. He won’t ask, of course, but the more time he spends with the wives, the more he naturally wants to better understand them and help them.

Despite what he remembers of his training, it’s hard to maintain an appropriate level of distance when he’s living so closely alongside them. When he’s able to make his escape, it’ll be like New York all over again, nights haunted by dreams of the people left behind.

“Are you ready?” Frankie asks. She fixes her copper-red hair to frame her face and checks her dress.

“You haven’t exactly told me what we’re here for,” Malcolm points out.

“We’re here for whatever Negan needs,” she says, raising her hand to knock and waiting only until Malcolm nods.

As the door unlatches and cracks open, Negan welcomes them in with a brusque, “About damn time.”

Frankie pushes the door open and lets Malcolm close and lock it. “Sorry we’re late,” she says, setting her bag down on the glass coffee table. “We’ll make it up to you.”

They aren’t late, not by any measure of time. Malcolm surveys the bedroom, unsurprised by the opulence on display. The wives and the handful of other living quarters he’d seen had all been fairly utilitarian with single beds in most and kitchenettes in many, but none of them had looked like it came straight off the page of an interior design magazine.

Shirtless and barefooted, Negan drops back down onto a large black leather couch, tucking himself into the corner and stretching one leg out along the cushions. He glances meaningfully at Frankie and cracks his neck.

Rather than simply stand around and wait for instruction as Frankie digs out a bottle of massage oil from her bag and begins warming it between her palms, Malcolm takes a slow tour of the room. He walks it like he’d move through a club back when he was cruising for a good time, making sure to show off the curve of his ass and stand with his hips tilted like he’s ready to have his shorts dragged down and a cock shoved in him. None of the art or the decor is—was, he corrects himself—expensive or particularly well-made, it’s only notable now because it’s pristine.

With Negan’s watchful eyes on him, he completes the circuit. Stopping behind the chair set opposite the couch, he slings his weight on one hip and glances up at the shoulder-mounted trophy hung on the wall. Taking his chances, Malcolm asks, “Doesn’t it feel weird having that thing watching you sleep?”

Negan chuckles dryly. “Sleeping? No. But sometimes I prefer more privacy when I’m jerking it.” He lets out a groan and wriggles into the cushions as Frankie works her fingers into his shoulders. “Were you a trophy hunter, rich boy?”

“Never.”

“What about your parents?”

“My mother sold all the family trophies at auction and converted the game room when she inherited the house.”

“No father? Don’t tell me you were immaculately conceived.”

Having since learned the name of the man he resembles, Malcolm pulls a face. He glances over his shoulder and reaches up to drift his fingertips over the bristly hair of the antelope. “My father didn’t collect trophies, but he was an avid hunter.”

“Big game?”

“No,” Malcolm replies. What would it matter if he told Negan the truth? To say aloud that his father was Dr. Martin Whitly, the serial killer known as The Surgeon? Would it make him more valuable to the Saviors? More of a risk? He strokes the long curving horn of an animal that had gone extinct in the wild around the same time the outbreak began. In the end, Malcolm opts to go with what had always served him in the past, obfuscation tinged with black humor: “Birds were his favorite, but no matter what he hunted or trapped, he always butchered his kills.”

“I like a man who doesn’t waste potential,” Negan says. He lets out another long, satisfied groan as Frankie begins working his scalp. “Cookie, why don’t you leave that goat alone and come sit on Daddy’s lap.”

“It’s a scimitar oryx, actually, an African species of antelope,” Malcolm tells him. He might not have grown up in a family of hunters, but he and Ainsley would watch endless hours of nature documentaries together. He’d always liked the ones about weird insects, reptiles, and pack behavior. She’d always loved the ones about birds, dolphins, and predators.

As he skirts the chair and moves to Negan, Malcolm says, “You know, most scholars think the scimitar oryx is the origin of the unicorn myth, in part because of how from the side it looks like the animal has only one single horn.” He points back at the shoulder mount, which from this angle demonstrates the effect. Negan doesn’t look annoyed, so he slides into the space the man makes for him between his legs and continues, “Aristotle and Pliny the Elder both wrote about the oryx as being in possession of only a single horn, and that could be from observation, or because their horns are actually hollow bone. Unlike species that shed their horns, if an oryx loses one, it doesn’t grow back.”

“Cool beans. Sounds fascinating. Too bad I wasn’t paying attention to a fucking word you said, darlin’,” Negan says, nuzzing into Malcolm’s hair as his hand explores beneath Malcolm’s top. Today, Malcolm’s back in the worn tee he’d arrived in, now clean, the soft, sweat-wicking fabric snug on his frame but loose at the neck.

Malcolm doubts that’s true, but he bites his tongue as Negan toys with his nipple, edging it to a hard point with a blunt thumbnail. The sensation goes from teasing pleasure to a spreading warmth, the heat moving liquid to his groin and his cock stiffening until it’s trapped uncomfortably beneath the cutoffs. He starts to squirm, his bottom moving restlessly against the couch cushions as the nudge of Negan’s cock presses insistently into the low of his back. The man is so fucked up, so reprehensible, and yet, Malcolm can’t deny he’s still drawn to Negan. He has that same dark, simmering magnetism that Dr. Whitly had, only he wears it on the surface, not hiding behind a hot cup of tea and a gentle smile.

After a while longer, when both of Malcolm’s nipples are tender and his breathing labored, Negan pauses in lipping at Malcolm’s ear and says, “I think that’s enough for today, Frankie. Thank you, gorgeous.”

She gathers her things and ducks out, and as the door latches shut, Negan slips his hand down the waist of Malcolm’s shorts to curl deft fingers around Malcolm’s cock. “How’ve the girls been treating you, cookie?”

“They’ve been great.”

“Daddy,” Negan prompts, burying his nose in Malcolm’s hair.

“Sorry, Daddy,” Malcolm amends, shuddering as a jolt of lust goes through him. The other night aside, he hasn’t called a man that since he’d been using a fake ID to get into clubs, even though he thinks it sometimes. Finds the word crowded in his throat when Gil is on top of him and whispering filthy, loving things into his ear. “The other wives have shown me around, and have been filling me in on what’s going on outside and inside Sanctuary.”

“And what have you been doing for them?”

“I’ve been looking out for them, Daddy,” Malcolm says, insinuating.

Negan stops pinching and toying with Malcolm’s nipple to slide that hand down to undo Malcolm’s fly and shove his shorts and underwear down under his balls. He cups them as he strokes Malcolm without impediment, giving a squeeze that doesn’t get close to the threat of pain but Malcolm’s body aches for wanting it anyway. “Doing just what Daddy asked you to do,” he croons. “That’s my good boy.”

“I’ve also been teaching them some self-defense. Specifically, how to break away if someone is trying to corner them against a wall, or choke them,” Malcolm confesses, gambling that if Negan hasn’t already heard, he will soon, and that this is an opportunity to prove his loyalty.

“You think someone’s looking to hurt them?”

“Rape is against the rules in Sanctuary,” Malcolm says. His foot digs into the floor as he pushes up into Negan’s grip. “But, that doesn’t mean someone isn’t going to break the rules. And if somehow the walls are breached, the women will be better equipped against the dead.”

“Definitely not a lawyer,” Negan states, giving Malcolm’s balls a firm squeeze and letting go. He brushes away the bead of precome pearling at the tip of Malcolm’s cock onto his thumb and bucks his hips to get Malcolm to sit forward. “Suck Daddy’s red-tipped throb rocket while he does some speculating.”

Malcolm’s brows pull upward as he parses that euphemism and twists onto his belly. He slips his arms alongside Negan’s narrow hips as he moves his mouth up the inside of the man’s thigh, the drag across denim making his lips tingle before they meet skin. “I could just tell you, Daddy,” Malcolm says, knowing that Negan won’t want him to. He looks up as he catches the thin skin of Negan’s sac between his lips and gives it a tug.

“Think tank,” Negan guesses.

“Nope,” Malcolm says, delivering a light nip that makes Negan’s breath hitch before he sucks one of the man’s balls into his mouth. He tongues at it and thinks, _face, throat, groin,_ as his lashes drop and he focuses solely on the tender, vulnerable flesh in his mouth. When he lets it slip free, he presses forward, weight on his forearms like he’s moving into a modified cobra pose, back arching and mouth parted, spit wet on his lips as he moves to swallow Negan.

“All righty then,” Negan says, scratching at the scruff on his cheeks and humming thoughtfully as Malcolm’s head bobs. Salt-sweat blossoms on Malcolm’s tongue, fading each time his lips come close to grazing wiry curls. “Let’s see… Harvard Medical, maybe. Bit full of yourself but still looking to help people,” Negan pauses for a deep shuddering inhale, his tone turning jibing as he asks, “Were you studying to be a doctor, cookie?”

Malcolm pulls off with a wet pop and a bitter, nigh-hysterical laugh. “Definitely not. Doctorate, maybe. Medical doctor, never.” He scrapes his teeth over his lip and snuggles down a little more comfortably as he curls his fingers to try and contain the tremor in his hand.

“Ooh, well, one of us should’ve been a surgeon ‘cause I hit a motherfucking _nerve_ there, didn’t I, Lucille,” Negan says, glancing out the corner of his widening eyes at the bat laying atop the bed. He catches Malcolm’s chin before his mouth is filled again, his grip firm but not vicious, his eyes twinkling. Mischievous. “Was your old man a doctor?”

“He was.”

“So, papa was a big shot New York City doctor,” Negan says, hand moving to his cock to angle it and tap the head against Malcolm’s lips. “And you, smart, little rich boy, what would you do? You suck dick like you’ve got something to prove to yourself. Save lives… protect people... don’t tell me you were gonna dump the trust fund to play at being a cop?”

“Not quite,” Malcolm says, a half-truth that may make it less likely for Negan to see through to the truth. He isn’t _afraid_ , not quite, but his pulse is speeding and his whole body feels as if it’s vibrating. He shifts fitfully, being eaten alive by the same restless energy he once got from being tied down and blindfolded and told to _wait_.

“I’ll figure it out eventually,” Negan murmurs. He fists his dick and pushes his hand through Malcolm’s hair, fingers massaging as he guides Malcolm back down into a leisurely rhythm. “Cookie, you were made for this. Ooh, Daddy is going to dump a nice, big load on that soft tongue of yours.”

Malcolm moans around the flesh riding hot on his tongue and grinds himself against the couch, fucking against the smooth leather with the same slow rhythm he makes with his mouth. The fingers rubbing against his scalp slowly move their way to the nape of his neck and then down, further and further until that broad, warm hand is sliding down the back of his shorts. A thick finger dips into his crack, slicked enough by the heat of the day that when Negan finds the clench of his hole the pad of the man’s finger slips along it easily to tease the taut muscle of his rim.

He drops one leg off the couch, knee settling on the floor to give Negan more access. Malcolm pulls off to let one moan pour unhindered into the air as Negan’s finger breaches him, then sucks kisses down the shaft until he’s mouthing at the heavy hang of Negan’s balls again. “Can’t wait to taste you, Daddy,” Malcolm says, licking and sucking and rocking his hips.

Beneath Malcolm, the leather is slicked with precome, a hot edge of friction as he writhes for more. Negan withdraws his hand only to hock up spit and return slick fingers to press back in, press deeper. They hook into his body and tug, and Malcolm rubs his cheek against Negan’s cock before he swallows him again. He could come from this, easily. More easily when his mind strays away from the immediate satisfaction of pulling a groan out of Negan with the hot pressure of his mouth, to the rich, vivid memory of the last time he’d been sprawled on a couch like this. His face getting wet, his back striped with welts as Dani’s blunt nails dug into him. The way she’d shivered as she asked between sips of air if he thought anyone else minded that she kept handing him back all marked up, and he’d buried a smile against her thigh at what she still didn’t realize was a sort of coy, competitive flirting and her way of signalling that maybe she was ready to have another partner besides him. That once he’d laughingly let slip that Edrisa liked to count the welts by touch and make guesses about how many would last until the next morning, Dani had begun to do it more often.

He’s drawn back out of the pleasant haze of recollection by the gravel of Negan’s voice. “You think you earned your meal, Cookie?” he asks. He pulls his fingers out of Malcolm, sniffs them once before shrugging and wiping them on Malcolm’s shirt. “Anything you want to tell Daddy before he gives kitty some cream?”

Malcolm lifts up, wipes his mouth on his bicep and clears his throat. “About Sherry?”

“Unless there’s something else on your mind, darlin’,” Negan says, amiable on the surface like the still water of a swamp. Calm for the time being, but dark and dangerous.

“She’s concerned about something,” Malcolm says, an answer that provides a chance for him to push for guilt or innocence, although certainly it weighs towards the former in Negan’s mind. “Another day or two and I’m confident she’ll trust me enough to let some useful information slip.”

“Boy, I should invite you to poker night and see how well you read my men.”

“Well, having me in your lap would make several of them uncomfortable and distracted. It could make them more likely to bet rashly.”

“CSI.”

“CSI? Like the television show?”

Negan’s cock bounces, waving in the air until Malcolm takes it in hand and prepares to finish the job. “You know,” Negan murmurs, his gaze hungry and steady on Malcolm’s, “all that nerdy lab shit and figuring crap out. Seems right up your alley, cookie.”

“Wrong again, Daddy,” Malcolm says, dropping a kiss on the very tip of Negan’s cock before taking him deep, sucking hard and fast to get him off quickly now.

His head falls back, the knot of his throat leaping when Malcolm dips down and twists, his eyes watering briefly as Negan's cock grazes the back of his throat. His hands snap to Negan’s hips and hold there when the flesh in his mouth swells, spits a salt-rush flood onto the back of his tongue. He nearly swallows, but manages to hold it in his mouth in case that’s what Negan wants from him. Alkaline bitter quivering deliciously on his tongue as he slides his mouth off, the taste coating his mouth and his throat and carrying on each inhale. He’d always loved this.

Negan fits his hands under Malcolm’s arms, urging him to get up and move to straddle his lap. Malcolm does, his lips still carefully sealed.

“What did I do to deserve this gift delivered onto my doorstep,” Negan purrs, voice thick with the smug pride that comes from thinking that one has value for the things they own. “Holding it all and I didn’t even have to ask. Are you willing to share that cream with Daddy, darlin’?”

Malcolm nods. A razor-sharp slice of lust cuts through him, impossible to feel until his nerves catch up to it, until Negan is nuzzling their lips together and murmuring, “Good boy,” and licking his way into Malcolm’s mouth. 

He jerks Malcolm off slowly, grinning every single time something he says gets a shiver to course through Malcolm’s frame. Until Malcolm is trembling against him. Begging with softly rasping words while he thinks of cold basements and deadly secrets and how Lucille is right there, only a few feet away on the bed. Malcolm clings to Negan, his fingers weaving into the greasy tangle of his hair. Thinks about the sound of a skull caving in as Negan says, “Of course, baby, that’s what I'm here for, to take care of you,” when the smoldering, fire-hot pleasure boils over and he’s spilling over Negan’s knuckles and gasping out, “Thank you, Daddy. Thank you.” 

“I take care of all my wives,” Negan says. He sucks the come off the web of skin between his thumb and forefinger and then slides his palms across Malcolm’s cheeks until he’s pushing Malcolm’s hair back away from his face. “I got some boys going up to Hilltop, and a few more out looking for your friends. In a couple weeks, when that beard grows out, you’re headed to Alexandria. I need some eyes on that place. They’re providing, but they’re feisty little rabble-rousers, that lot.”

The way Negan’s voice ignites gives Malcolm the sense that he admires the group in some way. A great deal more than any of his own Saviors, at least that Malcolm has seen.

“This community. Do they know him? Jesus?” Malcolm says, naming his doppleganger aloud.

“Oh yeah, Jesus gets around. But to what extent?” Negan shrugs his shoulders. He pats Malcolm on the thigh, signalling that he’s done with him for now. “So, you keep your distance, cookie. Observe and report back, just like you are with the wives. If my buddy Rick over there in Alexandria catches you, though, I’m sure you’ll think up something.”


	4. Chapter 4

Malcolm has taken to leaving his door open so as to be approachable, and tonight it’s not Frankie coming to share a bit of wine and gossip; it’s Negan’s tall, lean frame shadowing the entryway.

“How is my newest, smokin’ hot wife doing?” he asks, propping his shoulder against the jamb. Malcolm had overheard the grunts and giggling from down the hall, so by the sweat glistening at his temples and the lipstick staining his jaw, Negan’s here for an update, not a fuck.

“Enjoying the freedom to walk around Sanctuary and make more friends,” Malcolm answers. He holds up the rudimentary beanie he’s learning to crochet under Pauline’s tutelage. “Learning a useful skill while working on that beard.”

Negan gives him an appraising, appreciative look. “A man of many talents. Come give Daddy a kiss.”

Putting aside the yarn, Malcolm slides out of bed and crosses to the door. Negan cups his face, thumb ghosting over the whiskers shadowing Malcolm’s jaw. At a week’s worth of growth now, they’re just long enough to not rasp under the touch. Malcolm stretches his arms up around Negan’s neck to kiss him, tasting one of the other wives on the man’s breath as he winds his tongue into Negan’s mouth.

A hand settles at the low of his back, and Negan pulls their bodies together into a tight line. “That’s my boy,” he murmurs, his hand sneaking down to give Malcolm’s ass a hard squeeze. “Tomorrow, we’re due to be getting some new supplies from our friends at Hilltop, and who knows what kind of goodies are going to be in the mix. Bound to be something worth celebrating. What do you say, cookie? You and me and Tanya? Get you all liquored up to lick her up.”

“Sounds fun, Daddy,” Malcolm says. He flicks his tongue across Negan’s lip and then settles back on his heels to wait for a cue.

“Good. And find yourself some new goddamn outfits. I don’t need you strutting around looking like another piece of pussy twenty-four seven.”

“Yessir.”

*

It takes half of the next morning and two of the other wives’ help for Malcolm to find some new outfits to wear. Outside of the pieces in the wives’ Wardrobe, most of Sanctuary’s clothing has been scavenged with utility or comfort in mind.

“I’m not sure this is what Negan’s looking for,” he says, doing up the buttons of a simple chambray shirt that’s been brought in a few inches to fit him. “Are you sure this is the right way to go?”

“Sometimes you only find out through trial and error what Negan wants,” Frankie tells him. “But you tried the booty shorts, and if he wants to celebrate....”

“This wouldn’t pass at my mother’s table,” Malcolm remarks, tucking the tails of the shirt into a pair of black skinny jeans that were seemingly the only pair of pants in the whole building that weren’t khakis, cargos, or classic blue denim. He accepts a deep blue tie shot through with gold from Frankie and flips up his collar to loop it around his neck. After almost a decade, it’s amazing how much muscle memory he retains to still be able to do up a tidy windsor on the first try.

“Well, you look very handsome,” Frankie says.

“Thanks.” Seeing himself in a full-length mirror properly clean and dressed up like this, it feels like looking at someone else. An echo from the past. An anomaly. Malcolm fingers the lock of hair that keeps slipping from behind his ear. “My hair is getting long. I used to wear it like this before, but usually, when it starts to get this way my, uh— my friend Dani trims it for me. She doesn't like when it gets in my eyes.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Sherry says, coming up to primp his collar. She brushes that same bit of hair behind his ear only for it to slide loose as she watches. She smiles wistfully and half turns to the assembled women. “Tanya, can you pass me the pomade?”

Malcolm stands there as Sherry finger-combs his hair, working in enough pomade to get it to stay back away from his face. His hair is ragged at the ends, knife-cut and uneven, far from the clean perfect trim he used to have seeing a barber once a week, but he looks almost like a young professional should.

“There we go,” she says, setting her hands on his shoulders and admiring her handiwork in the mirror. “If Negan doesn’t like it, we’ll try something else.”

“If Negan doesn’t like what?” At the sound of Negan’s voice, everyone turns.

“Malcolm’s new outfit,” Sherry says, taking a step back. She picks up the jar of pomade to screw the lid back on, evaluating, as Malcolm is, Negan’s abrupt arrival with a teenaged boy in tow.

“Ladies… cookie… don’t mind the kid.” Negan leans in to speak to the boy, who has a bandage over his right eye and an almost too-large sheriff’s hat perched atop his head. Malcolm can see the boy’s discomfort. A palpable halo of fear and anger crackles around his deer-still stance. Negan doesn’t seem to be looking at him like he’d looked at Malcolm—with _interest_ —but the kid’s anger has roots.

They clearly have some sort of history.

As Negan pulls Sherry into a sidebar, Malcolm makes eye contact with the boy. The hat is an interesting choice. Possibly a deliberate one versus simply to block the sun. An heirloom or trophy? An idealistic statement?

The kid’s brow furrows, but he doesn’t look away.

What, Malcolm wonders, does the kid think about him being here amongst Negan’s wives? Negan had mentioned a delivery from Hilltop, is this boy from there? Does he know Jesus and see the resemblance? Does Malcolm look like a wife to him? Or does he look like someone who is taking advantage of the women here? Dozens of questions tumble around with no answers in sight.

Risking Negan’s wrath, Malcolm approaches the kid. “Do you want something to drink?” he asks. “Negan wanted you to make yourself comfortable.”

“No, thank you.” His curt but polite response carries something more than hesitation. There’s definite recognition in the way his gaze skips across Malcolm’s features, as if he’s trying to make sense of what he’s seeing.

Not wanting to spook the kid or pull too much of Negan’s attention, Malcolm uses the same tone and tactics that he implements whenever his group encounters other survivors on the road. “If you change your mind, I’ll be happy to serve you something. My name’s Malcolm,” he says, and puts a hand to his chest, hoping that reflexively the boy will at least give him a name back.

But the kid doesn’t reply. He looks away to end the exchange, and rather than attempt to press the situation, Malcolm retreats to take up a post near the wall. He schools his expression back to neutral as he keeps his ears open, picking up bits and pieces of Negan’s exchange with Sherry. Negan might not trust her entirely, but he clearly still expects her to keep the other wives in check.

Like Amber, who has made the mistake of not fully shedding her old life, and apparently not feigning her interest well enough in this new one. Fat tears slide down her cheeks as Negan offers her the sort of kindness that comes laced with poison.

“You want to go back to Mark and your mom?” Negan asks her in a soft tone. He’d reiterated that he doesn’t want anyone here who doesn’t want to be, and for all of Negan’s cruelties, Malcolm has to admit that from what he’s seen, the man abides by his own rules.

Of course, Negan has a skewed point of view on several of said rules, and many are weighted in his favor. Walking away has its own penalties. Choosing to stay has some as well—for Amber’s old boyfriend, Malcolm presumes. The woman is barely holding it together when Negan asks Sherry to go fetch the doctor.

He aches to help. To do _something_. But without risking a whole lot of killing, there’s nothing to do but stand there like another piece of decoration in an already grotesquely appointed room. Every so often, the boy’s attention settles on him, and each time it sticks for a few more seconds.

“Did you see that? Wasn’t hard on her, even though I am _very_ hard in general,” Negan tells Sherry, visibly pleased by his own crude innuendo.

“You’re an asshole,” Sherry says, not quietly enough that Malcolm can’t hear it. That the boy can’t hear it.

“I know,” Negan says, and his gaze flicks over briefly to meet Malcolm’s. “But the messed up thing is, you like me, anyway.”

He chuckles as he pulls Sherry into a kiss and raises his hand to call Malcolm over with a flick of his fingers. Malcolm can feel the kid’s eyes burning with questions as he goes to Negan then surprise when Negan slips an arm around Malcolm’s waist and turns to take a kiss from him, too.

Negan keeps his hold on Sherry as he claims Malcolm’s mouth, as his hand skids down to tease at his ass. “Variety is the spice of life, kid,” Negan says, nuzzling at the hinge of Malcolm’s jaw before turning his attention back to Sherry. He nudges his lips against hers as he fingers the seam running down the back of Malcolm’s form-fitting jeans. “Ain’t that right, cookie?”

“He’s a little young, isn’t he?”

“Bet you were cruising for dick at his age,” Negan says off-handedly, tucking his fingers in Malcolm’s back pocket as he noses at Malcolm’s jaw and sucks a quick, bright mark to the surface of his skin. Malcolm gets the sense Negan brought the kid here to show off and not to threaten him, but this is still a power play. And he suspects, as Negan’s smile scrapes against his skin, a way to further cement the man’s reputation as a wildcard.

As Negan turns back to Sherry, one of the Saviors appears with a prisoner in tow. He’s the same prisoner Sherry had pointed out earlier today when they’d been going around bartering for clothes.

“His name is Daryl. Negan’s trying to break him,” she’d said, pointing him out amongst the other prisoners wrangling with the dead on the perimeter fence. He’d come from Alexandria, the community that the Saviors had taken over, and her face as she’d studied the man from afar was dark and thoughtful. “Everyone breaks eventually, but not everyone goes easily.”

Whether that comment was an observation about Daryl, Alexandria, or both, Malcolm couldn’t tell, but there’d been as much meaning in the exchange as there had been when they’d shared a cigarette. It could be a warning or a request, and now, here in the Harem with things starting to feel like they’re coming to a boil, he’s still not sure. Negan murmurs a pleased sound as he shares a slow kiss with Sherry, and Malcolm feels the tension coiling in her. The questions sit like lead in his gut, multiplying as a shock of recognition leaps between Daryl and the kid in the hat.

Whatever situation it is that Malcolm had stumbled into here in Negan’s camp, it’s big, and it’s dangerous. The boy is clean and well-fed, and that look from Daryl tells Malcolm more about Alexandria than anyone here has let slip. In addition to having at least one young person, it’s clearly stable enough to be converted to providing for Negan instead of absorbed or eradicated. And Daryl, who has endured an unknown number of days in Negan’s campaign to break him may have been close to folding, but the moment he sees the kid, all that work is undone.

Malcolm can see it, clear as day, even while so many other factors remain opaque. He pieces together more parts of the puzzle as Negan drags out the kiss with Sherry. She’s gone wooden beside Malcolm, and an equal discomfort simmers in Negan’s lackey. Judging by the increasingly deliberate indifference from the wives around the room, that must be Sherry’s former husband he’s heard whispers about. The others might not be able to tell, but the flat expression in the burn-scarred features of his face isn’t as dispassionate as it seems. He’s doing his job shepherding Daryl around, but he’s not convinced he’s doing the right thing.

Hoping to break the tension a bit, Malcolm lays a hand on Negan’s arm and shifts his weight forward as if begging for another kiss. Negan’s fingers claw deeper into his ass, and the man turns a lazy, calculated smile on him before pecking him on the cheek and whispering a promise that they can have some fun later. With a final squeeze, Negan lets both him and Sherry go and wanders over to take a nibble from the tray of food Daryl holds in a white-knuckled grip.

“Carl, will you grab this tray for me?” Negan asks, not even glancing at the kid. He spears an olive with a sharp stab, striking with quick precision like a viper.

“Why you got him here?” Daryl snarls.

“Woah!” Negan says, giving Daryl an exaggerated look for the backtalk. There’s admiration in the thunderstorm crackle of him sizing up the other man though, the same wary appreciation he holds for Sherry.

Daryl doesn’t hold his cards nearly so close to the vest. He’s a powder keg, and the look he throws Malcolm is pure vitriol.

“And you?” he spits. The tray in his hands shakes from the effort to not fling it and go down fighting. “What the fuck are you doing here? Knew we never should’ve trusted you.”

Malcolm cocks his hips, using the excuse to balance his weight in case Daryl can’t hold it together and this turns into a brawl. “I don’t even know you. I’m Malcolm,” he tells the man, “I’m Negan’s newest wife.” Briefly, he meets Carl’s confused look. If the boy also thinks that Malcolm looks like this other man, Jesus, he’s not taken by it not, like the others. Which likely means he knows something the others don’t.

Malcolm tucks that thought away as Negan chomps down on an olive.

“Cookie, you don’t answer dogs, and you,” Negan says, his tone darkening as he addresses Daryl, words wrapped as sharp and deadly as Lucille, “do not make me put this toothpick through the only eye the kid has.”

Malcolm struggles not to hold his breath amidst the tripwire tension. He sees the moment Daryl realizes it’s a losing fight the same time that Negan does, and beside him, Malcolm hears Sherry’s soft exhale as well.

Negan rattles off some orders, leaving with Carl and ordering Daryl be taken back to the floor for janitorial. When they’re alone again, just the wives, most of them flock to Amber to console her as she crumples in on herself and fails to hold back a wracking sob. Malcolm though, turns to Sherry. “What’s going on?” he asks in a low whisper. He doesn’t need to clarify that he’s talking about Daryl.

She fishes something out of her bra and takes his hand, pressing it into his palm—a key?—before she pulls him into a tight hug that leaves her mouth beside his ear. “If he’s still alive by tonight, you take him with you. You remember our little stroll.”

“What about the kid? Carl?”

“Negan won’t hurt him. He never hurts kids. He’ll try and turn the boy first, but if he doesn’t take the bait, he’ll let him go,” Sherry says, speaking with enough conviction that Malcolm believes it.

“And what about you?”

Sherry kisses him on the cheek, a bittersweet press of her lips. “You, cookie, you’re my diversion.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional content warning: there is a brief scene of unwanted groping/sexual assault in this chapter

At Sherry’s suggestion, Malcolm attends Negan’s demonstration. The moment the old clothing iron is pulled, glowing from the fire, he understands the scars on her ex-husband’s face. As Amber’s one-time boyfriend screams and pisses himself under the press of the metal, Malcolm scans the crowd to gauge how many of Negan’s crew fall into the three camps of typical followers: sadists, survivalists, or cowards.

There are more sadists than he’d like to see, but no more than half of Negan’s soldiers, and the crowd itself isn’t bloodthirsty. Daryl, the prisoner, keeps a stony face. He’s taking pains to hide his disgust not for anyone’s benefit, Malcolm thinks, but simply because he’s accustomed to it. Based on his reaction to seeing the kid amongst the wives, probably a rough childhood, definitely not an easy one, but an upbringing that likely gave him the skills to fight without hesitation when the outbreak started. And the outburst he’d directed at Malcolm—or, rather to his lookalike, the scavenger from Hilltop he’s been mistaken for—that says to Malcolm that Daryl values tribal loyalty. A pack mentality. He’s found his people and he’ll die for them without question.

Malcolm leans against the railing, observing Negan lead the kid away and Daryl mopping up the mess left behind. None of his options are particularly good ones. Whether or not he helps the man escape, Negan’s soldiers will be after him, and there’s no way to minimize the risk to Gil and the others when he doesn’t even know where they are.

He drums his fingers and curses inwardly. His only real chance is hoping that he’s correct in that seeking help from someplace other than Sanctuary is the right call, and that Alexandria might be that place.

After the majority of the crowd has dispersed, he spends some time wandering the marketplace. In the days since Negan claimed him as a wife, word had traveled quickly and people defer to him as much as they give him sidelong looks. Amber had seemed surprised that the attention didn’t bother him, but what was he going to tell her, that people judging him for being Negan’s boytoy couldn’t even come close to growing up with a serial killer for a father?

Careful not to attract too much attention bartering for supplies that might come in handy on the run, Malcolm’s glad at least for the clothing upgrade. Having proper pockets again means that he doesn’t have to worry about trying to squeeze anything into half-sized pockets.

As the day continues, it’s steady slide towards evening, Malcolm sticks close with the rest of the wives so as to not arouse any suspicion and is relieved to discover that Sherry had been right about Negan and the boy. Word is he was being returned to his community, and also that the prisoner gave some lip and was back to sweating it out in that windowless box of a cell.

Pack loyalty, Malcolm thinks, easing back on a divan and taking advantage of a chilled drink before leaving that luxury behind. As he thumbs the label, he closes his eyes and draws strength from the memory of his own team. He’s rarely taken them for granted, but if—when—they’re reunited he certainly knows now much he loves and values them all… He misses them, terribly, the comfort of a soft bed in relative safety had been a novelty that first night, but he’s gotten so accustomed to sleeping beside them—his lovers who don't hesitate to curl tight arms around him if the nightmares creep in.

He opens his eyes to slivers and takes another sip of the beer as he tracks the sunlight crawling across the carpet.

A late afternoon escape isn’t as ideal as the dark of night, but in addition to Negan being off-site, there are a few additional benefits daytime provides. There will be fewer people indoors for the first part of the extraction—after the demonstration, many Saviors had gone ranging on patrol, and the ones that have remained are likely to be somewhat less attentive without an overseer. And Sherry, she’d be spending what time she could with her ex-husband before she made her own escape.

When the time is right, Malcolm makes a graceful exit. There’s nothing else he needs from his quarters, so he weaves his way through the maze of corridors. By sheer luck, he manages to avoid any patrolling Saviors, and as he approaches the makeshift cell, he fishes the key out from where he’d hidden it.

Facing the door, he hesitates. There’s a voice in the back of his head, one he rarely gives space to unless the hordes of the dead are around him.

_Are you sure this is what you want to do, Malcolm, my boy? Get yourself into a mess of trouble for a stranger?_

He licks his lips, staring at the bit of metal, runs the pad of his finger over the jagged teeth of the key.

_You have no idea who these people are—Daryl, Carl, whoever this Rick fellow is. They could be just as bad as the man you’ve been calling Daddy. You ought to listen to your_ real _father and save yourself._ Malcolm screws his eyes shut, forcing away the insidious whisper that belongs in the past.

He draws in a cleansing breath and slots the key in the lock. He puts a hand against the metal as he turns the knob, ready to ease any noisy hinges, but the door busts open and he staggers back. Malcolm manages to dodge the wild swing Daryl takes at his head, but the man drives a shoulder into his chest, shoving him until his back slams against the wall. Daryl bars an arm against his chest, a painful dig against his collarbones. Hot, rank breath washes over him as Daryl's lip curls away from his teeth.

“Stop. Daryl, I’m here to help you,” he gasps out, eyes wide as he tries to hold his hands up in surrender.

“Help me, the fuck you doing here, slutting it up with that maniac—” Daryl’s brows twist, his eyes flickering between Malcolm’s and he eases up a touch. “You’re not Jesus.”

Malcolm opens his mouth to explain, but Daryl doesn’t give him an inch. The man renews his assault, pinning him even harder. “You’re right, I’m not! Negan’s men caught me, and because of how I look he’s, uh, kept me and wants me to spy on Alexandria. That’s where you’re from, right? Negan is taking your friend back home there—the kid, Carl. I want to help.”

“I don’t got any reason to trust you,” Daryl says.

“You’re right, you don’t,” Malcolm agrees without hesitation. “But my friends are out there, and Negan is going to hunt them down. I need to find them. I know where the vehicles are and I can lead you there. I’m unarmed, although I have supplies in my pockets and in my bag. You can check.”

There’s a struggle happening inside Daryl, a war maybe between wanting so desperately to trust someone and having little to no reason to actually do it. Malcolm forces himself to maintain an even rhythm to his breathing, to keep his muscles relaxed. He slowly raises his arm higher in surrender, ready to twist and break the hold like he’d taught the other wives earlier in the week. Ready to fight, if absolutely necessary.

He exhales in relief when Daryl makes a frustrated growl and starts patting him down. Malcolm shrugs the small canvas messenger bag off his shoulder and hands it over for inspection.

Satisfied enough, Daryl thrusts it back to him. His mind made up, he still sounds grudgingly reluctant as he says, “Okay. Where to?”

Malcolm rattles off the instructions in case they get separated and begins to lead the way. They end up circling near the officers quarters to avoid a patrol and Malcolm pauses near the string of doors. There are two rooms he knows are unoccupied, but risking more of Negan’s wrath by disturbing his things seems unwise. “Hold on,” Malcolm says and stops at the door Sherry had so visibly tried to ignore. He tests the handle and it’s unlocked. “In here, it’s empty. The owner is otherwise occupied.”

Daryl nods, and Malcolm pushes open the door. Once inside, he closes and locks it behind them, and they both waste no time in scanning the room with haste and an eye for anything useful.

He’s a lot more careful and meticulous in his search. Daryl immediately strips off his filthy, stained sweatshirt and flips things over and yanks open boxes, tossing through scattered belongings to find something clean to wear.

“Wash up in the sink first,” Malcolm says.

“Ain’t no time for that, we gotta get moving.”

“There’s time,” Malcolm assures him, calm on the surface despite the wild beat of his own pulse. Every fibre of his being says to hurry, but all the echoes of his training and the caution Gil’s instilled in him helps temper the urge. He adds a few packs of matches to his bag and discovers a nearly full bottle of Jim Beam tucked in the cushions of a ratty recliner. He stows that in his bag, too. “I can smell you from three feet away. Wash up, and we’ll get out of here more easily.”

Daryl’s lips thin, like he’s going to argue, but then he grabs up a tea towel and starts the tap, giving himself a scrub down that leaves his chest angry and red. Malcolm silently notes the scars flexing along his back, long and thin and laid down in flesh by a switch or a belt.

“Better,” Malcolm says when Daryl’s done. He tosses the man a clean tee that looks like it will fit. Daryl pulls it on hastily and grabs a plaid work shirt off a hanger, thrusting his arms through it and shrugging it on. Malcolm tosses him a ballcap to complete the look, catching the moment when Daryl’s eyes land on something that makes him recognize whose room they’re in.

Daryl’s knuckles go white and Malcolm rushes to intercept before he can flip into a rage. “You do that, it’ll call attention,” he warns, calmly but firmly. “More importantly, you need to put some calories in you for energy. If you’re not allergic, eat some of this.” Malcolm pushes a jar of peanut butter into his hand, interrupting him with a physical distraction.

Thankfully, it seems to work. Daryl yanks the jar out of Malcolm’s fingers and stalks restlessly.

“What, then?” Daryl grinds out, his words a stifled shout. He’s clearly dealing with a great deal of trauma and repressed fury all the days—weeks?—of being isolated, starved, and degraded has left him. He moves to throw the jar at the wall but stops at the last minute and bites back a frustrated growl. Hunger and practicality win out, and Daryl mutters, “Fuck this,” as he unscrews the lid, scooping out thick fingerfuls of peanut butter and choking it down. He drinks water straight from the tap to wash it down.

Malcolm glances up from sifting through a drawer full of nothing but odds and ends, bits of detritus that might have meaning and might not. “We resume our way to the yard, and we get the hell out of here.”

“You’re nothing like him,” Daryl says suddenly. He tosses the now-empty jar onto the bed and wipes his hand off on the bedding.

“Jesus?”

“Yeah.”

Straightening and slinging his bag across his body, Malcolm doesn’t respond to that, but Daryl’s reaction makes him curious. Just how well does the man know his dopplegänger?

“You ready?” Daryl asks, snatching up a screwdriver and sliding it up into his sleeve.

Turning his back to Daryl in a symbol of trust, Malcolm listens carefully for sound in the hall. There’s no piercing pain in his back, no sharp punch of metal, and he releases the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding as they slip back into the hall.

On the ground floor, near the corner of a hallway junction that would lead them to freedom, Malcolm signals for Daryl to slow. “There are guards in that room. I’m hoping with Negan out, they’re less attentive than usual.”

“How many?” Daryl asks in a rough whisper.

“Probably four.”

“So, we shut our traps and walk soft.”

Malcolm gnaws at the corner of his lip and digs in his bag for the jumble of supplies he’d lifted from the infirmary. “Actually, I think I have a better idea.”

“Ain’t no way we take down four men just the two of us.”

“I need you to stay back for five minutes or until I give an all-clear, but if there’s a commotion, forget it and keep going: straight down that way, left at the T, first door on the right takes you straight into the yard. Everything out there is gassed and ready to go. If you come across a group of four, two men and two women, three of them well-armed and well-trained, those are my friends,” Malcolm says and sketches out a quick description of them and their vehicles. His fingers tremble slightly as he pulls the bottle of whisky out of his bag. He hands the supplies to Daryl. “Tell them I love them. All of them.”

Daryl catches his sleeve, as if he has more to say or is surprised that a stranger would take the risk and let him run. Malcolm ignores the touch, slipping away and falling into a casual walk, his hips finding a bit more sway until he’s strolling into the guard room with a breeze smile. “Hey, boys, boss wanted me to let you know he’s going to be sending you a little thank you from us wives,” he says, interrupting a poker game. The four guards scramble to reach for their weapons, easing up as soon as they recognize him. He winks and grabs some plastic cups from a stack. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell. I’m just here to pour you a few celebratory shots before the real party arrives.”

The men start congratulating each other, but he can feel at least one pair of eyes crawling all over him as he pours a fifth of whisky into each cup and then follows it up with a splash of something extra.

“One for you, and you, and you...” he says, distributing the cups and keeping hold of the bottle for himself. He lifts the bottle and toasts with: “I am Negan.”

“I am Negan,” the Saviors affirm, and the one that’d been eyeballing Malcolm loops an arm around his waist to pull him close as he tosses back the drink. Malcolm fakes a stagger, lets himself land gracelessly into the man’s lap.

“You want a taste of what Daddy gets?” Malcolm asks coyly. A meaty hand runs up his thigh. There’s no low sizzle of enjoyment with this as there’d been with Negan. No thrill of playing with fire and waiting to get burned. Fucking Negan had been survival, sure, but it was also unraveling a mystery, pulling at threads to figure out what made the man tick.

This is no mystery.

Another man tries to take the bottle from Malcolm’s hand, but Malcolm holds it out of reach, playing at flirty and clucking his tongue as the asshole whose lap he’s perched in drags a lick along his jaw. “Daddy’ll punish me if I waste too much of his good whisky,” Malcolm says, squirming in such a way that he gets his feet and weight stabilized beneath him. “I can stay and play with you before the girls get here, but you boys don’t want to get Daddy mad.”

He sets the bottle on the table and screws the cap back on, casting his gaze around the table. By the looks in their eyes, one of them is already keen on joining in, but the others hesitate. The fingers pawing at him pause, and now there’s confusion stirring on the men’s faces. The arm around him slackens, and Malcolm jabs his elbow into the neck of the man holding him. He leaps into motion as two of the others begin to slump in their chairs, locking an arm around the biggest man’s neck to put him in a chokehold until the ketamine takes effect.

When he’s sure that all of them are sedated or unconscious, Malcolm pops his head into the hallway and waves Daryl in.

“One last thing before we go,” Malcolm says, bringing Daryl’s attention to the door the group was guarding. “If we leave them with an arsenal, there’s going to be a whole lot of bloodshed. Bulk of their small arms are behind that door.”

“Only so much two of us can carry,” Daryl point out.

Malcolm grins, a little bounce in his step as he ducks into the storage room. “True, but I can field strip a rifle in a matter of seconds,” he says, grabbing up an AR-15 and tossing it to Daryl. “You?”

Between the two of them, they strip the firing pins and springs from nearly every rifle and handgun in the room. It goes twice as fast as Malcolm expected; Daryl is just as nimble-fingered as he is. They take the evidence with them, Daryl carrying a duffle crammed full of the parts, a few choice weapons, and boxes of much-needed bullets.

Malcolm grabs a few scraps of cloth that stink of gun oil and the whisky bottle off the table, and then they’re hurrying down the corridors and into the yard.

“That one,” Daryl says, hastening to move one motorcycle out of the row.

Nodding, Malcolm starts undoing gas caps and splashing whisky on the rags. He freezes when the crunch of gravel sounds at the other end of the yard and a Savior comes around the corner.

Daryl heads straight for the guy, who immediately holds his hands up and promises to let them go, that they were never here. Pleading that he’s just trying to get by.

There’s no sound from the punch of the screwdriver, Daryl’s hand fitting over the man’s mouth as he stabs him, multiple times, all that rage behind the force of his arm until the Savior is slumped and bleeding.

“Daryl,” Malcolm says, glancing over as he lights the rags on fire, one after the other.

Daryl is hunched over the body, fist bloodied and arm hesitating.

“Daryl,” Malcolm repeats, a bit more urgently. He moves into Daryl’s peripheral and extends an arm towards him.

The screwdriver falls to the dirt and Daryl wipes the blood off on the front of his shirt. He staggers back. “It ain't just about gettin' by here,” he spits. “It's about gettin' it all.”

He looks over, still furious but more clear-headed, and Malcolm drops his arm, nodding. He estimates probably three minutes before the gas tanks start to blow as Daryl starts up the bike. Tossing the empty bottle, he slides into the seat behind Daryl and wraps his arms around him.

He’s only ever ridden on a motorcycle behind Dani, and his chest tightens briefly wondering if she and the rest of them are okay as they roar out of the yard and past the back gate. They’re long blocks away when the blast rocks the factory yard, and Malcolm twists, craning his neck around as big gouts of black smoke blossom into the air. He’s grinning, manic and thrilled, and nearly loses his hold on Daryl when the bike wobbles and they skid to a halt.

Malcolm peeks over Daryl’s shoulder, his eyes going wide as he finds himself staring into a familiar face.

“Guess you didn’t need a rescue, after all,” says the man in a long coat standing alongside JT.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags and pairings updated to reflect more attention given to the polycule. Also, I can't resist the Desus, guys.

Malcolm wants to leap off the bike and run to throw his arms around JT, a gesture that would probably invoke an eye-roll and a muttered “Watch the guns,” but he stays put as a swell of emotion knots up his throat. His hold on Daryl must’ve tightened reflexively because the guy turns to look at Malcolm from the corner of his eye. He aims a nod towards JT. “That your friend?”

“Yes, one of them. That’s JT.”

“JT? What’s it stand for?”

Malcolm bursts into laughter, the pressure in his chest pushing the sound towards hysteria. Tears wet his eyes as he drops his head on Daryl’s shoulder and wheezes. “I have no fucking idea. I’ve been trying to figure it out for ten years.”

“Where we goin’?” Daryl shouts, tracking JT as he shoulders his gun and goes to retrieve Dani’s bike from where it sits propped and waiting.

“Towards Hilltop,” Jesus shouts back, jogging out of the middle of the road. He flicks his coat and hops into the seat behind JT, gesturing eastward as JT revs the engine. “Their camp’s about an hour out, near the covered bridge. We regroup there.”

As they take off with JT and Jesus in the lead, a part of Malcolm settles down, the anxious hum that’s lived in his chest for days now fading away. But as they leave the broken streets behind, curiosity rises to take its place. That brief glance into eyes that felt like looking in a mirror: what are the odds?

 _”My boy, you’re forgetting the infinite monkey,”_ chimes the voice in the back of his head.

He closes his eyes, for once not to force it away but to listen. He plunges willingly back into the too-crisp memory of sitting on the floor of his father’s cell, a notepad perched on his knee as his face scrunched up at the absurdity of the phrase.

“The infinite monkey?”

Dr. Whitly had sat up, eyes twinkling and a smile on his face. “Oh, yes. The infinite monkey theorem states if you plop a monkey down in front of a typewriter for, well, an infinity, it’s random pecking of letters will eventually,” he’d paused for dramatic effect, his nose wrinkling as he whispered sotto voce, “recreate the works of Shakespeare.”

“So, someone _could_ have an exact double?”

Palms striking against his thighs, Dr. Whitly had cocked his head, brows rising. “Well, a mathematician can probably give you a precise statistic, but in my book? Anything’s possible, my boy. And then, of course, there’s cosmetics and facial reconstruction—”

As the echoes of his father’s voice fade in his memory, Malcolm wants to let his cheek rest against Daryl’s back as he might with Dani, to take comfort in the closeness of someone else alive and breathing. He leans back instead, tipping his face to the creep of night shifting the orange of the sky towards the dusky purple of aging bruises.

*

It’s near dark by the time they make it to the camp. Once weapons are lowered and assurances are made, Edrisa is the first to dart over, slim arms going tight around Malcolm’s neck before he’s even gotten both feet on the ground. He catches her at the waist, stealing a glance over at the others as she buries her face against his chest and squeezes him as hard as she can.

“I’m okay. I’m back,” he says, not rushing to get her to disengage.

Dani gives the two strangers a once over and raises a brow while JT shrugs at her and says, “Weird, isn’t it?”

“I’m Paul Rovia, but just about everyone calls me Jesus,” says the man who is Malcolm’s near double. They even _sound_ the same. He turns and gestures. “I’m from a community called Hilltop, and this is Daryl, a member of a neighboring community.”

Gil steps forward and extends a hand, taking the liberty to introduce himself and the rest of the team. Daryl keeps his arms crossed over his chest, but Jesus exchanges a handshake, his brows creeping towards the brim of his knit cap with an expression that verges on amusement.

“Good to meet you,” Jesus says. “JT’s told me a bit about your group, and I’ve told him a little about mine. We could use some fighters.”

Malcolm tosses a sidelong glance at the man. He understands generally what makes Daryl tick, but Jesus is a new and fascinating puzzle. “You’ll take us in? Just like that?” Malcolm asks.

“For a night, at least. I can’t promise a long-term stay, but I can introduce you to our leader. He’d be the one to talk to.”

“That’s Gregory, right?” Malcolm says, recalling that first conversation with Negan when the man had thought him a spy.

Jesus’s eyes narrow slightly, and he dips his head in a faint nod. “Yes, Gregory’s the one in charge.”

“We got guns, they got guns. Let’s go before those assholes track us down,” Daryl says. He’s not impatient so much as he’s likely trying to put as much ground between himself and Sanctuary. To be somewhere that feels safe in a way that the woods don’t.

“They won’t come this way,” Jesus says. “Saviors never do. They’ll have trucks and will keep to the main road in order to avoid the covered bridge. It’s not in as poor condition as they think. That’s just a rumor.”

One that Jesus has had a hand in spreading, Malcolm suspects.

“Kid, what do you think?” Gil asks.

His instincts say that, if Daryl trusts Jesus, they should, in turn, but the firepower Negan commands is far from insignificant. They’ve ended up in the middle of some sort of turf war, or a situation that’s brewing towards one. Picking sides may not be the wise course of action, and yet, how many people in this region are suffering under Negan’s thumb?

Malcolm gnaws on the inside of his cheek and looks at the assembled faces, his gaze settling finally back on Gil. “Let’s talk,” he says and extracts himself from Edrisa to pull Gil to the edge of the clearing safely away from earshot.

“What happened out there?” Gil asks, his brows knitting together in concern. One broad, warm hand lands on his shoulder and the other atop Malcolm’s head, smoothing over his skull and down to the nape of his neck before slipping away.

“It’s a long story that has to do with my lookalike over there, and also, I maybe had to sleep with a sociopath who took me as a wife in his creepy harem,” Malcolm admits, rolling his eyes. “Don’t worry, it wasn’t all bad. I mean, obviously killers with god complexes are not my first choice of sexual partners, but—”

“Malcolm.”

“I think we can trust these two, but I’m not positive. The people who had me were very well-armed and my, err, ex-husband is extremely smart. I think we need to split up. I can go with them and check out Hilltop, the rest of you can follow tomorrow.”

“You’re not going off alone again, are you kidding me? We just got you back!”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Yeah,” Gil says, nodding, his expression pinched. “Because you’re staying here. I’ll go and meet with their leader and make my own assessment while you sit tight and fill the others in on what happened. You know how Dani and JT are, they were worried sick about you, but they’re not going to admit it.”

Malcolm’s gaze skips over to the two of them, and he catches Dani watching him. She looks away, pretending as if she’d also been conferring with Daryl about the weaponry they’d stolen. Nearby, Edrisa’s already mollified and making what is probably slightly inappropriate small talk with Jesus.

“Be careful with their leader, Gregory. I get the impression that he’s not as effective as he might want others to think.”

“Kid, I was a cop for how many years? I know what ineffective leadership looks like and how to kiss ass when I need to,” Gil says, and draws Malcolm into a warm enveloping hug. “I’m glad you made it home safe.”

“Me, too,” Malcolm says, reluctant to pull away.

Gil kisses him at the temple, hand rubbing against his back as he guides Malcolm back towards the others.

“We made camp already, so Malcolm and the team here are going to stay the night,” Gil declares. “I’ll go with you two to meet your leader, and we can start from there.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Jesus says. He gestures at the notepad in Edrisa’s hand which she holds up helpfully. “I’ve drawn a rough road map starting from the covered bridge, and both JT and Edrisa now have a list of directions. Just follow the landmarks and you’ll find us easily enough. If you don’t want to risk taking something that heavy across the bridge, go east along the bank for about a quarter mile and you’ll find a shallow enough place to cross without worrying about getting stuck in the mud.”

“I take it you’re going to want to borrow my ride,” Dani says, slinging her weight on one hip as Gil passes his rifle to her.

“If you don’t mind,” he says.

“If I have to sit in the truck, I call shotgun,” Dani says, pressing her lips together as she retreats to stand near JT.

“Fuck!” Edrisa says. “I hate being in the back.”

Malcolm stifles a smile and catches Jesus doing the same.

“Shouldn’t take you more than an hour and a half to reach Hilltop in the daylight,” Jesus tells them as he slides into the seat behind Daryl. His hands settle around the man’s waist in a way that is both comfortable and familiar, and Malcolm begins to re-evaluate Daryl’s reactions to him. “We have guards on the wall, and while they’ll be expecting you, you should still plan to exit your vehicle and lay down your weapons when you arrive.”

“Understood,” Malcolm says.

“Keep an eye on him, will you?” Gil says to the others as he starts the engine. “Don’t let the kid run off again.”

“I didn’t run off. I was… separated,” Malcolm protests.

“We got him, boss,” JT says, hooking an arm around Malcolm’s neck.

When the sputtering growl of the bikes fade into the distance, it’s Edrisa who breaks the silence. “Have you eaten?” she asks. 

He shakes his head and follows her to where they’ve set up a small cooking fire. He’d never been great at remembering to eat or teasing apart the discomfort of anxiety from the hollow ache of hunger pangs.

“We’ve got some cornbread left over from yesterday, and Dani snared some squirrels,” she says, digging through their supplies to hand him a small bowl and a spoon.

The food at Sanctuary had almost been too good to believe. It’d been years since he’d eaten raised, oven-baked bread, let alone been treated to an array of different fresh vegetables instead of what they happened to forage from overgrown gardens. Taking a seat on the deck of the armored riot truck, as he spoons up mouthfuls of a gamey yet bland protein and an equally bland quickbread, it’s the best meal he’s had in a week.

He gives them all a rundown of what happened after he’d gotten trapped on the other side of the herd, from realizing it wouldn’t pass until morning and needing a safe place to hole up, to being caught by Negan’s men and everything that followed. He skips certain details but not two of the most important ones: opting to sleep with Negan and an assessment of Sanctuary’s residents and its firepower.

It’s pitch black beyond the glow of the embers when he’s done, and he’s answered all the most pressing questions. At a certain point, Dani had come to sit beside him, tangling her fingers with his and pillowing her cheek against his shoulder.

“After we saw that guy Negan roll out with the kid, we were gonna bust in and get you,” JT says. “Me and your evil twin.”

“Evil?” Malcolm says, tossing a questioning glance at JT.

“He’s the one with the beard. I don’t make the rules.”

“He seemed nice to me,” Edrisa says absently, tidying up a bit with JT’s help. She pauses in the middle of packing away their makeshift camp kitchen and looks over her shoulder at Malcolm. “Do you think you guys look the same naked?”

“Edrisa!” JT says and whips a towel at her.

“What? Weren’t we all thinking it?”

Beside him, Dani shakes with silent laughter.

“I most definitely was not,” JT mutters.

“Well, you are now,” Dani says, the amused smirk on her lips making it into the tone of her voice. She gives Malcolm’s hand a squeeze before she shifts into a crouch and crawls into the nest of sleeping bags and blankets that line the interior of the truck. She pulls off her boots and tucks them onto the benches that flank the walls. “One of you take first watch, I’ll take second.”

Normally, they run a perimeter alarm made up of bells on string, stand a brief watch, then call it a night. It's been a long time since they had to worry about the living.

“I’ll take first,” Edrisa offers. “You guys want to be with Malcolm more right now, don’t you?”

It’s not a degree of more, Malcolm thinks, but that for Edrisa it was enough to see him and for the others, they need tactile reassurance.

“You and Dani want some private time?” JT asks.

Malcolm glances at her. The soft glow of a solar lantern propped between the seats near the front of the vehicle leaves her face in shadow, but he gets the sense that she doesn’t mind sharing right now. Still, he moves in to have a quick, hushed conversation and make sure.

“I’ve missed you all,” he says, hand settling atop her knee. “I’d love to have both you and JT with me right now, if that’s okay.”

“I’m okay with it. We missed you, too,” she says. Before he can pull away, she grabs his wrist, clearly struggling to find the right words. “Bright, I, um, I want you to know I think you were right.”

“About what?”

“That sometimes we rely on you too much. You know, to be an interpreter.”

“Are you telling me things fell apart while I was gone?”

She dips her head. “No, the opposite. Guess it forced us to face up to a few things that we haven’t had to think about in a long time.”

Malcolm puts a mental pushpin in that to explore later. Right now, all he wants is to have the both of them in here bracketing him between their bodies. He untucks his shirt and waves JT in as he loosens his tie. Dani scoots forward, hands sliding around him to help undo the buttons of his shirt and peel it from his shoulders.

“No marks,” he says, as her hand drifts across the planes of his back. “And no regrets. He was a sociopath, definitely, but so were half the men I slept with in college.”

The truck sways as JT climbs in and props his weapons by the doors. He removes his bandolier and extra holsters, then strips to the waist before flopping down into the space to Malcolm’s right. “Don’t get any grand ideas now about us being your wives,” he says gruffly and pulls Malcolm close to make him the little spoon.

Dani lays down facing Malcolm and puts her hand on his face. Her thumb strokes his cheek. “I like the term partners better anyway,” she says.

“Does it bother you? Either of you?” he asks. “That I had sex with someone outside the group?”

He’d ended up in bed with Edrisa first, then JT. He thought if Dani would have been interested, it would’ve been her next, but it was Gil, and it had surprised them both to work through the tangle of baggage that Dr. Whitly’s arrest had left them with.

It took Dani the longest to be okay with being in a relationship with him. Fear of pregnancy aside, her trust issues run just as deep as his, even if they spring from a different source.

“You did what you had to,” JT says, ever the soldier and the pragmatist.

“Yes, but more than a small part of me also wanted it,” Malcolm admits.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever understand,” Dani says, inching close until their noses touch. “But this is what makes us strong, right? That we’re all different, but we love each other above all else.”

“Amen to that,” JT says. “If we settle down with this Hilltop crew for a while, you might have plenty of extra folks willing to help tire out your insatiable ass. Hell, you want to do the nasty with your evil twin, I don’t care. You just promise to spill the dirty details ‘cause now, I gotta admit, I kinda want to know.”

“Oh my god, he is not going to sleep with Paul, Jesus, whatever he wants to call himself,” Dani sputters. “... are you?”

“Can we stop making hypotheticals about a man I don’t even know?” Malcolm says.

“He’d do ‘em,” JT says to Dani. His arm tightens affectionately around Malcolm. “Both of ‘em would. I shot the shit with that guy for a good four hours. Your boy, Jesus, he’s definitely not straight, and he is down... to... _fuck._ ”

The way JT places serious emphasis on the last three words makes Malcolm’s ears burn, and he rethinks the wisdom of being willingly trapped between these two.

“I mean, I wouldn’t say no just because he looks kind of like me,” he says.

“Kind of? Bruh, remember that time you went a month without a shave? You two look exactly alike.”

“Oh my god,” Dani repeats, laughing this time. “I’m in love with a ho.”

The heat has moved into his cheeks, and Malcolm fights the urge to squirm. “I’m not asking for permission! JT’s the one who brought it up!”

Her grinning kiss smothers the rest of his protest, words dissolving under the soft press of her lips against his. “Bright, I may not always like it, but as long as you come back to me—to us—that’s what matters, isn’t it?”

A hard shiver runs through him, not a shot of lust but the warm ripple of belonging. “I’ll always come back to you,” he promises, kissing her back before twisting to offer his mouth to JT, too.

“You better,” JT teases as he takes the kiss. It stays soft and chaste for a heartbeat, but then JT puts a hand to his jaw to turn him into it more fully.

A kick of desire drives up his heart rate. Malcolm hadn’t anticipated the heat of lust behind the push of JT’s tongue into his mouth, not while Dani’s hand still rests loosely on his chest. Usually, everyone besides Edrisa was somewhat uncomfortable with displaying affection that skewed sexual when they weren’t alone. Maybe this had been more traumatic for them than he’d thought, and the need to feel and see that he’s okay goes deeper than having him safe between them.

He’s about to ask if this is making Dani uncomfortable, but her fingers skate over his cheek to trace the corner of his mouth, hesitating before they drift across to JT’s. The pads of her fingers rasp across the five o’clock shadow that shades JT’s jaw, a sandpaper scrape that sounds harsh in the silence.

Malcolm inhales a soft gasp when JT breaks the kiss only to move his mouth against Dani’s fingers. He can feel her trepidation, the way her breath hangs in her lungs as JT gets bolder and sucks a kiss at the heel of her hand. Malcolm scrapes his lip with his teeth seeing the moment unfold. This is a far cry from her flirting with Edrisa through the vehicle of his body, this is immediate and charged.

“Okay if I—?” JT asks, his hand sweeping down Malcolm’s side to the snug waist of his jeans.

It’s not a question for Malcolm, and Dani does more than simply nod, she helps unfasten the fly as Malcolm whispers a “please” and lifts his hips. They strip the jeans off him with greedy hands. He’s left bare and hard, and he presses himself eagerly into the curve of Dani’s palm when she kisses him again.

The jingle of JT’s belt opening is loud in the confined space. It sends a thrill zinging throughout Malcolm’s body. Reflexively, Malcolm makes space for him, hips angling back to invite the press of JT’s cock between his legs. “In my pocket, if you want to use something other than spit,” Malcolm murmurs, but JT’s already slicking himself up and pressing against him.

Malcolm breathes through it, as eager for the stretch as he is for the feel of Dani’s skin against his knuckles as he slips his hands beneath her top. Her belly flutters under his touch, skin going tight as the fabric gets pushed up by his hands. She moans into his mouth when he gets a handful of her breast, the thin bralette doing nothing to hide how stiff her nipples are.

He feels just as tense, just as eager, his brow furrowing as he tries to process each touch. Dani always kisses like she’s trying to pull something out of him, but her tongue retreats briefly when Malcolm’s body rocks. “Are you—?” she asks, pulling away as he takes JT inside him, and he’s not sure who the question is for or how she means to end it. She seems to not know, herself, and shakes her head to dismiss it.

“Do you want to stop?” Malcolm asks, panting lightly, his hands on her body going still.

“No,” she says. She pushes herself up, sitting for a moment to strip her top off and looking past Malcolm when she peels off the bralette.

As her arms drop, she seems ready to fold them around herself, to cradle her nakedness in front of him and JT. There’s a visible effort in the way she rises to her knees to undo her pants and push them down, to bare herself completely before sinking back into the space beside Malcolm.

Before she can reach for him again, he gathers her hands and kisses her fingers, meeting her gaze in the dim glow of the solar lamp. “Let me...” he says, closing his mouth over her fingertips and slipping a hand down between their bodies.

Her fingers twitch against his tongue, and he feels her pulse leap beneath the hand looped lightly around her wrist when JT starts to rock into him again. She moves against the slick press of his fingers at her clit, and soon she’s reaching with her free hand to grip at JT’s elbow. Malcolm lets her fingers slip from his mouth when she scoots closer, body rolling like a wave and finding a rhythm to match JT’s.

As good as it feels to have JT moving within him and Dani moving against him, the current of pleasure runs deeper than that. He’s a connection point between them, a bridge towards something neither of them knew they needed or wanted, and when JT finishes inside him and pulls away, Malcolm isn’t the only one reaching to draw him back into a kiss.

Face and limbs tingling, Malcolm wriggles down, letting them fall into one another for the first time. He drops a kiss at the curve of Dani’s hip, tonguing a path towards her navel as he encourages her to lie back and open to his mouth. When she does, JT moves to take the space Malcolm abandoned, curling over Dani to kiss her deeply.

Malcolm feels the ripple of tension when, for a heartbeat, she reacts to the bulk of JT’s body, that sensation of being _trapped_ that thankfully vanishes like a flash in the pan. A flare then it’s gone, and there’s the slap of her palm finding JT’s back and holding him close. 

Her fingers fist in Malcolm’s hair, newly desperate. He looks up the line of her body and watches them explore each other as he writes her a love letter with his tongue, palms bracing on Dani’s hips until she’s shaking and moaning quietly into JT’s mouth.

When she’s squeezing her thighs, overstimulated and trembling as much as he is, Malcolm sits back on his heels and wipes his mouth off on his arm.

“You want a hand?” JT asks.

Malcolm shakes his head, his teeth on his lip as he strokes himself into his cupped palm and revels in the sight of them together—Dani curling towards JT, letting him hold her with the same tenderness that Malcolm loves so much, and JT’s face soft with wonderment as he looks from her to Malcolm.

He wipes his hand off on the tie he’d left discarded amongst the bedding and tosses the ruined silk into the corner before crawling sated back into the arms of his lovers.

Tomorrow, he thinks, is going to be a brand new day.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, an epic thank you to Cosmic for beta'ing this beast and helping me figure out how to bring it to a (hopefully) satisfactory conclusion after my plans went slightly awry.

Malcolm wakes with Edrisa draped over him like a living, breathing, too-warm blanket. Carefully, so as not to wake her, he turns his head to find Dani still in the truck with them, watching him in the weak light of dawn. She’s already dressed and seated with her back propped against the bench that lines the wall of the truck. Her arms rest atop her bent knees.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey.”

“You okay?” he asks, noting the way she fiddles with the laces dangling from her boots.

The light catches her lashes as she blinks slowly. “You probably think it was a long time coming.”

“That’s not really my place to say.”

She tips her head as her face scrunches up. “‘Not my place…’ Fuck you, Bright, I know you profile all of us,” she says, mood shifting to straddle the line between exasperated and wry amusement. 

Wincing, he starts to ease himself out from under his personal furnace. “Fine, okay, so I may have made some internal wagers about how the various relationship dynamics between our group would progress, but—”

“It was nice,” Dani says, interrupting. As she prepares to nudge open the back door with the heel of her boot and exit the vehicle, she gives him another lingering look. The morning light haloes through her curls. “I felt… safe.”

Malcolm scrapes his teeth over his lip and offers her a smile as Edrisa stirs and tries to pull him back into the nest of blankets. “Good,” he says. “Just, um, if he acts like nothing happened last night, give him some time.”

“Noted,” Dani says and passes him a fresh bundle of clothes before she exits with a murmured, “I’m really glad you’re okay, Bright.”

By now, Edrisa has actually woken up, and he spends a little time cozied up with her before rolling out of the makeshift bed. Of all of them, she’s the least prone to jealousy and the quickest to say what’s on her mind, but sometimes she comes at things from an angle he fails to anticipate. This morning, her mind is mostly along the same track as his: wondering what they’re going to find awaiting them at Hilltop.

“Do you think they’ll let us stay?” Edrisa asks. Once dressed, they work in tandem to stow the bedding. 

“Maybe.” Malcolm passes her another folded blanket to slip into one of the storage compartments beneath the floor. He rests on his heels, thumb rubbing against his forefinger as he considers how it might go. “If they need fighters, we certainly have the skills and the training. I think we need to decide if they’re the kind of people we want to stay with.”

“Jesus seemed nice.”

“Did he?”

“JT thought so, too.”

In Malcolm’s experience, nice isn’t always a good indicator of character. His father, of course, being the prime example of how easy it is to put on a friendly face. And willingly letting himself be known as “Jesus,” even if it may have started as a joke based on the way he wears his beard and his hair... Hopefully, he’ll have a chance to actually talk to the man or observe his interactions with Daryl to get a better read on him, but even if they’re only welcome at Hilltop for a day, it should still be plenty of time for him to gauge how that community compares to the Saviors’ Sanctuary.

“I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”

*

Malcolm rides in the back of the armored truck with Edrisa, eyes closed as the vehicle sways nauseatingly when they opt to cross upstream instead of risking the bridge. From there, it’s another hour with only a rare walker spotted in a field and nothing else on the road to slow them.

“That’s a proper wall,” JT says, easing off the gas to slow their approach once they hit an incline.

Dani lets out a low whistle, and Malcolm and Edrisa clamber towards the front of the vehicle to take in the view of the most well-fortified community they’ve ever seen. Aside from Sanctuary, since leaving New York and avoiding the teeming masses of urban streets, they’ve only come across small pockets of people—groups no larger than twenty and not able or interested in sharing anything else but a bit of news about road conditions or herd patterns.

“That’s the Barrington House,” Malcolm says, recognizing the colonial building peeking out over fort-like wooden walls. “It was bought in the mid 1800s by an abolitionist and eventually turned into a historical site. I only know because my mother was involved in some sort of fundraiser for living history museums.” He points out where acres of gardens have gone semi-wild, and the obvious places where it’s been tended back to thriving. “Subsistence and trade, that’s a lot of seeds and cuttings. If they get all of that going again, that’s enough to feed five hundred people easily.”

“Well, let’s hope they’re not batshit insane like your hubby,” JT says, stopping the vehicle a good fifty feet beyond the perimeter.

They file out, leaving most of their weapons stowed in the truck. The few standard sidearms and bladed weapons they keep on their persons they remove in sight of the guards standing watch atop the walls.

Malcolm steps forward when the gates open, holding his arms wide to invite a pat down.

“You must be Malcolm,” says the woman striding out to greet them.

He’s about to ask how she knows, but of course, it’s the face. “And you are?”

“Maggie,” she says and skims a critical eye over the group. “You’ll have to leave your truck and your weapons out here. You can lock ‘em up or have someone stand guard, if it makes you feel better.”

“I’ll stay with the truck,” JT says. “They okay to go inside with a short-range walkie?”

Maggie nods, and JT unclips one of a pair of receivers off his belt to toss it to Dani. “In case anything goes sideways,” he says, not bothering to keep his voice from carrying.

“I thought Gregory was in charge of this place,” Malcolm says, following Maggie in through the gates. His eyes dart around the grounds, taking note of the rows of FEMA trailers, additional beds of closely-tended crops, some livestock, and even a working blacksmith forge. It’s impressive.

Her response to Malcolm implying she holds a position of authority is telling. “He is the democratically elected leader,” Maggie says with the same sort of diplomacy of a well-timed ‘bless your heart.’ She nods towards Barrington House. “Your friend is meeting with him right now along with Jesus and Daryl. Thank you, by the way, for helping Daryl get out of that place and away from that maniac.”

There’s a wound in her at the way she refers to Negan, and Malcolm’s chest pangs in empathy.

“Of course,” he says in all sincerity. He considers trying to tease out more about the bad blood between her and Negan, but now that he knows where Gil is, his gaze keeps straying to the manor house. “You say they’re meeting now? I take it Gregory isn’t a night owl if he didn’t want to entertain guests late yesterday.”

“He most certainly is not. I, on the other hand, had a nice long chat with your friend Gil, and based on what Jesus and Daryl have told me, if Gregory doesn’t want you here, Alexandria will take you.”

“You’re from Alexandria?”

She nods. 

“Would it be all right if I…?” he gestures towards the entrance to Barrington House.

“Y’all want to go inside?” Maggie asks.

“I’d rather get a full tour, if that’s okay,” Edrisa says. “Jesus said you had some medical facilities? I have some training.”

“We do. I can introduce you to the doctor, I’m sure he’ll appreciate it. How about you?” Maggie asks, turning to Dani who looks torn.

It isn’t that she doesn’t trust Malcolm to behave himself in there, but more likely that no matter how warm the welcome, she doesn’t like the idea of them splitting up when they’re so vastly outnumbered.

“Dani, why don’t you get to know a little more about Alexandria,” Malcolm suggests. “That is, if Maggie doesn’t mind?”

“That’d be great,” Dani says, the cloud of indecision gone. She knows as well as Malcolm does that if things don’t work out here, they could very well work out with this other community. Or they both might uncover more about the Saviors’ influence that will make the decision to move on that much easier.

“We can talk,” Maggie says. She calls over another woman to escort Malcolm to Gregory’s office, and Malcolm gives Dani and Edrisa a parting smile before he turns to follow the woman across the yard and into the pristinely preserved interior of Barrington House.

Besides a remote hunting cabin they’d stumbled upon a few years back and Negan’s bedroom, this is the first place he’s been inside since the start of the outbreak that feels like what normal used to be. The layout might be classic colonial and a great deal older, but it also reminds him of home.

Outside the door to Gregory’s office, he can hear Gil’s muffled voice relaying some of what they’d observed on the road.

“Excuse me,” Malcolm says, knocking as he opens the door and slips inside. He takes quick stock of Gregory who is leaning back behind a stately desk in a suit jacket. His pinched expression says he’s not really listening to a word Gil is saying. “Hello.”

Jesus, who stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Daryl at the bookshelves built into the back of the room, straightens and says, “This is Malcolm. The man Negan was hoping to use to spy for him.”

“Pleasure to meet you,” Malcolm says, remaining close to the door.

Gregory gives him a dismissive scan. “I don’t see the resemblance.”

Well, that’s a first, Malcolm thinks. Although anyone who hasn’t seen him with a beard would definitely have a harder time of it, he’s sure, that’s definitely not what’s driving Gregory’s rebuff. The man oozes the sort of backhanded, self-serving cowardice that Malcolm had seen far too much of growing up amongst the New York elite.

“If you want to know more about what Malcolm saw inside Sanctuary, I’m sure he’d be happy to relay that to you directly,” Gil says.

“Maybe tomorrow,” Gregory says. “Before you all leave.”

“You can’t kick them out,” Jesus protests. He doesn’t quite raise his voice, but Malcolm can hear the strain as he keeps himself in check. “If Negan’s men come here, we need more fighters and they have guns. They’re _trained_.”

“I don’t care what kind of training they’ve got. If Negan’s men come here, we don’t want them finding us harboring his wayward bride,” Gregory retorts. He shifts in his seat, scoffing at the very idea of putting up anything even resembling a fight. “We’ve got what, thirty people we need to protect?”

“Forty-eight,” Jesus says, flatly.

“A man like Negan isn’t going to stop taking from you until you have nothing left to give,” Gil says.

Gregory waves a hand. “You don’t know that.”

He might be in denial, but Jesus isn’t. From the corner of his eye, Malcolm watches the microexpressions play out across his features in a way that makes him wonder if he, too, is displaying the same subtle frustration. He’s holding back, and Malcolm can’t quite understand why. If Gregory doesn’t even know how many people live within Hilltop’s walls, he’s nothing more than a useless figurehead. And if his only regard is for himself, he’s a dangerous figurehead, at that.

“Look, I can do this for you,” Gregory says, spreading his hands across his desk in a gesture of benevolence. “After today, you can have two days to rest and resupply, and you can share stories or whatever else it is you want with Jesus, here. But if we even get a whiff of Negan’s men coming up the road, you are to get your asses out of here and leave your weapons and your vehicle behind.”

Gil looks ready to argue the point, to take the idea of leaving anything behind off the table, but with two days and the undercurrent of dissatisfaction in the room, Malcolm’s pretty sure he can unravel the whole pyramid Gregory sits atop. “Deal,” Malcolm says, ignoring Gil’s incredulous stare in favor of the sharp inquisitiveness of Jesus’s.

“Finally, someone reasonable,” Gregory says. “Thank you. Martin, was it?”

“It’s Malcolm,” he says, lacing his fingers together behind his back to hide the sudden trembling of his hand.

“Well, Malcolm, enjoy your stay.”

With that obvious dismissal, Malcolm swallows down the ugly, unexpected reminder of his father and opens the door to return to the hall. From there, he can see Daryl kick away from his spot against the wall, and the brief pause when he seems to expect Jesus to head out with him, but Jesus lingers at Gregory’s desk.

“We’ll talk later,” Malcolm assures Gil, staving off any questions as he strains his ears to try and overhear the exchange. He fails to catch any of it, and Daryl gives them both a glance as he passes by to head for the stairs. Giving up, Malcolm shifts his full attention to Gil. “In case you’re wondering, Dani and Edrisa are getting the tour from the woman you met last night, Maggie.”

Gil nods. “Smart woman. I like her. Since it looks like we aren’t staying, hopefully they’ll still get something useful out of it.”

They both turn as Jesus exits Gregory’s office. He shuts the door behind him and offers a small shrug. “Well, that went about as well as expected,” he says softly, nodding down the hall towards the other end of the building. “Let me show you to some rooms. I hope you don’t mind doubling up for the next few nights.”

“Not at all,” Malcolm replies.

“Kid, we’ll pack in like sardines for a real bed,” Gil says.

“We can do slightly better than that,” Jesus says, breathing out a quiet laugh before leading the way.

*

It’s nearing midday by the time they have the truck parked inside Hilltop’s walls and their essential gear moved into the suite inside Barrington House. Dani’s chat with Maggie went seemingly as well as Gil’s had the night before, gaining them a much better picture of the dynamics in the region and confirming that the woman is savvy and ready to stand up against the Saviors, if given the support.

The more Malcolm hears from the community members who come to talk to them, the more certain he is that this is a fight he can’t simply walk away from. Gil and Dani seem to feel much the same. JT had at first seemed a bit more mercenary about the idea, but towards the end of their conversations with others and then amongst themselves, he’s not ready to abandon these people, either. That leaves only Edrisa to weigh in, but Malcolm is certain that, while she might not care to be anywhere near the front lines of a fight, she’s not going to shy away from helping.

By evening, with two full meals in them and all of them having enjoyed the luxury of running water, the mood settling over everyone as they reconvene in the suite is mixed. Malcolm can feel it between each breath, how much they all want to stay and build a life again.

“The problem is at the top,” he says, nodding in the direction of Gregory’s office, “and unlike the Saviors, this problem rests on a very shaky foundation.”

“We’re here less than a day, and you want to stage a coup?” JT hisses.

Malcolm shrugs. “Do you have a better idea? With Gregory in charge, these people are going to get slaughtered,” he replies, keeping his voice as hushed as possible.

“What are you thinking, kid?”

“I’m thinking there are two people here that could easily challenge Gregory in a new election.”

“Ooh, it’s Jesus and Maggie, isn’t it?” Edrisa says.

He nods. “She’s somewhat of an outsider, and he’s definitely reluctant, but they have deeper ties within the community than Gregory does.”

“How are you going to force a vote?” Dani asks. Seated cross-legged on the bed, she hugs the pillow in her lap a little tighter to her chest.

Malcolm isn’t quite sure yet, but he still says, “Leave that to me.”

“Something here needs to change,” Gil says, not sounding thrilled about stirring up trouble but seeing the need.

“Step one is convincing the two of them not to balk at the idea of a vote,” Malcolm says, thinking his plan aloud. He starts to pace, making a tight circuit in the confines of the room. “Gil, do you think you could talk to Maggie again?”

“I can do that.”

“Great. Now, JT, you spent a lot of time with Jesus yesterday, do you—”

“I don’t think I’m the right man for the job,” JT says hastily. “That guy might not be subtle about checking another dude out, but he is all kinds of shifty. He’s a layer cake made of secrets.”

“Really?” Malcolm’s brow furrows. Now that he’s seen a bit more of Jesus, he’s far more inclined to trust the man. “He seems cautious to me, but not ‘shifty.’”

“Maybe it’s best if you talk to him,” Gil says, rising and clapping Malcolm on the shoulder. “Unless it’s a little too uncomfortable.”

“Uncomfortable isn’t the right word…” Malcolm pauses as he searches around for the right one.

“Bizarre?” Edrisa supplies helpfully.

He can’t argue with that. “I suppose I also have a good excuse to want to talk privately with him, so pulling him aside shouldn’t raise any eyebrows. Any _more_ eyebrows, anyway.”

“C’mon, if he’s not outside socializing, I can show you where his trailer is,” Gil says.

*

With Gil going up on the wall to talk to Maggie, Malcolm finds himself standing outside Jesus’s trailer wondering what to say.

A dozen unhelpful starters run through his head including, _Hi, I know we just met, but I think we should talk about overthrowing your leader,_ and, _So, it’s super weird that we look practically like twins, now why don’t you take over this place?_

Before he can stall any longer or overthink the conversation, he steels himself and raps his knuckles on the door.

“One minute!” Jesus calls out, and it takes a moment, but when the door swings inward, Malcolm stumbles over his planned greeting. Earlier in the day, he’d been clad in essentially the same outfit as the day before: long leather coat, padded vest, ripstop bdus strapped down with knives. Now, he’s in a loose, wide-necked linen shirt tucked into a pair of slouchy cargo pants riding low on his hips. The sun bleached strands of his hair cling together, damp and darkened where it hasn’t yet dried. A lingering artificial fragrance wafts off his skin. The scent isn’t unpleasant, but like the look itself, it’s a lot to process.

“Hi, uh, it’s Malcolm, but you knew that. Can I—Fuck.” He squeezes his eyes shut and draws in a cleansing breath. “Can we talk?”

Jesus says nothing for a heartbeat, then steps graciously aside, nodding to invite Malcolm in. “Place is a bit of a mess, I wasn’t expecting company.”

“You consider this a mess?”

“The group home I grew up in had strict rules about tidiness,” Jesus says, scooping up a pile of half-folded laundry and setting it back in the basket. He carries it over to deposit it on the table of a small dinette set made of laminate wood and stands beside it with his hip cocked. The casual stance is completely at odds with the shrewd way he tracks Malcolm in his space. “I guess old habits die hard.”

With such a blatantly deliberate decision to divulge a bit of background information, Malcolm wonders if Jesus expects him to share something in exchange, or if he’s simply trying to display a bit of trust.

“My mother also had rules about tidiness, but they mostly applied to the help,” Malcolm says. He folds his hands together loosely in front of him, which, speaking of habits, is one that he’s fairly certain he picked up from Gil. If Jesus has an opinion about Malcolm having enjoyed a very different childhood, it’s difficult to read. In fact, without another party to watch him interact with, he’s much harder to profile than Malcolm anticipated.

A sudden noise from the other room—the bedroom?—makes Malcolm start, his hand drifting to his hip out of habit.

“It’s just Daryl,” Jesus says.

“He’s staying with you?”

“Better than sleeping inside that fuckin’ house with that useless piece of shit,” Daryl says, appearing. He snaps his shirt to tug it on and does up the buttons as he stamps his feet into a pair of boots. “Don’t worry, I ain’t gonna stick around and listen to you two yapping. I’m going up on the wall.” 

“You don’t have to,” Jesus says. “We have plenty of guards on duty.”

“I’m sick of being inside,” he says, grabbing up a crossbow from beside the door. He gives both Jesus and Malcolm a look and snorts derisively as he exits.

“He’s been through a lot,” Malcolm says.

“More than you know,” Jesus says, and Malcolm considers whether he and Daryl are friends or fuck buddies or something else. Jesus crosses his arms over his chest, a gesture that is somewhat defensive yet also quietly confident. Malcolm wonders if they’re going to just end up solely sizing each other up like a pair of circling wolves when Jesus dips his head and says, “I’m sorry about earlier. Gregory can be a bit… difficult. But if you’re here because you want me to talk to him again in the morning, I’m already planning on it.”

“I have a request, actually.”

“Oh?”

“I know I’ve only been here for about twelve hours, but between what I saw at Sanctuary and what I’ve seen here, that’s enough to know that a lot of people are going to die unless someone around here is willing to do something other than offer tribute to Negan. It might work for a while, probably a good long time if it were up to Negan himself, but to maintain control within his ranks, he needs to make examples, and Gregory is the type of man who will offer you up like lambs to slaughter.”

“You want to call a vote,” Jesus guesses. “And you want my help to do it.”

“More than that,” Malcolm says, taking a half-step forward. “I want you to put your name in against Gregory. People like you and trust you, and from what I can tell, Maggie’s a good choice, too, but you’ve lived here longer. You know every single person in this place.”

That aura of confidence crumbles. “I can’t,” Jesus says, backing away. It’s an unconscious move to put his back against the wall, to eliminate angles of approach. His arms at his chest hug to his body more closely, fingers indenting into his own flesh. “I’m not the right person for that. I’m really not.”

“Would you do anything to protect this community?” Malcolm asks.

“Not anything—”

“Anything within reason?”

“Yes, but—”

Malcolm’s ready to push it, to lay out why he believes Jesus is the right choice. It’s so obvious. And maybe he and Jesus aren’t so similar that they think the same way, but the man is clever and compassionate...

“I’ll help you with the vote,” Jesus declares, forcibly relaxing his stance. He props his hands on the countertop behind him, knuckles white as they curl over the lip. He stares at a point on the floor, brows drawing together. “But not for me. It needs to be Maggie. The way she—look, trust me when I say she’s the right person to lead Hilltop, and besides, if we start a war, we’re going to need as many fighters as we can get.”

Malcolm can’t really argue with that.

“Gil’s talking to her right now. What if she says no? Will you do it, then?”

Jesus lifts his gaze to catch Malcolm’s. “I’d rather make sure she doesn’t say no.”

In the moment, the man reminds him of Dani, perfectly direct at times and then at others, taking a roundabout path at a subject to come at it from a sideways angle. Malcolm feels like, for the first time since they’d met, since trying to profile him from the clothes he wears to the way he holds himself, he’s truly begun to _see_ the man that Jesus is.

He’s damaged in ways that Malcolm can probably sympathize with but never quite understand, burdened by the same sort of trust issues that plague himself and Dani. The sort that means he knows everyone here by name but which still keeps him apart. That means he seeks comfort with a man from a different community who seems closed off to the world and yet recognizes like-for-like. Stray dogs with pack loyalty.

Malcolm feels the tumblers shifting, the lock opening, a whole host of truths visible to him now in a face that seems newly and vastly different.

Jesus doesn’t seem to mind the scrutiny. Maybe he’d been expecting it. “It’s eerie, isn’t it,” he says, finally. The softness of his tone breaks Malcolm out of the spell.

He blinks and thinks of the infinite monkey. “It is. And highly improbable.”

“With the way the world is, I’m not sure I believe anything is outside of the realm of possibility anymore,” Jesus says, arching an eyebrow. “This is a far more pleasant surprise, all things considered.”

“How did you…?” Malcolm gestures at his own lip, to the scar that’s a near mirror image.

“Baseball bat to the face when I was eleven. You?” The way he says it without blinking makes it more likely to be an accident than intentional, but Malcolm can’t be sure.

“Took a tumble playing squash in boarding school.”

“May I?” Jesus says, lifting a hand and extending it slightly towards Malcolm.

Malcolm dips his head in a slow nod and steps within range. It’s surreal to have someone who looks so much like him—who even _sounds like him_ —reach to touch him. It’s like facing an insomnia-driven psychosis of himself, a hallucination sprung from the most tormented days in his past. He’d never purposefully grown a beard because it reminded him too much of his father, but the fascination on Jesus’s face isn’t sharp and clinical like his own might be. It’s pure wonderment.

The pads of Jesus’s fingers lightly trace the edge of Malcolm’s lip towards the shallow divot of the scar that sits under the bristle of his whiskers. “This is really weird,” Jesus says, his gaze lingering on Malcolm’s mouth even as his fingers trail towards the rise of Malcolm’s cheek.

For all their surface similarities, Jesus’s hands are definitely rougher. Even with years of fighting behind him now, Malcolm’s calluses weren’t born in his youth, not the way Jesus’s are. He turns his head slightly, towards where Jesus is fingering the lock of hair that’s fallen loose beside his ear to gauge its texture, and with the sudden lift of Jesus’s eyes comes a faint blossoming of pink under the tan of his skin.

Oh.

Malcolm bites his lip and stays turned towards the touch as he holds Jesus’s gaze. People have always commented about his eyes, and maybe now, he finally understands why. Jesus’s eyes are maybe a touch more towards green where his own are a touch more towards blue, but right now, all he really notices is the glimmer of a question beneath the upward quirk of Jesus’s brow.

“Are we really doing this?” Malcolm says. He spares a thought for his lovers and whether this is a decision that he should even be making on his own, but of all of them it’s Dani who he hadn’t had to already talk through whether or not they were okay with him sleeping with others. Based on what she’d said last night, she had, in theory, given him permission. It’s maybe a little soon, but...

Jesus’s knuckles slide along the raise of his cheek and then the man is cupping his face, the rough edge of his thumb flirting below Malcolm’s bottom lip. “Haven’t you always wondered what it’d be like?” he asks.

Malcolm’s brows collide together and a laugh rides his exhale. “Not really.”

“Does that make me a narcissist?” Jesus asks, mouth quirking.

“Hardly, and I’m, uh, somewhat of an expert. If you looked up narcissism in the dictionary, there’d be a photo of my father,” Malcolm replies wryly. How vastly different their lives must have been for all the surface similarities. He shivers and licks his lips when Jesus’s other hand finds his hip. A tingle spreads along his skin beneath the fabric of his shirt, anticipation lighting up his nervous system like firecrackers. “It might make you a bit of a pervert, though.”

“Not really a fan of how that sounds. How about sexually adventurous?”

Malcolm purses his lips, an expression he knows he’s picked up from Dani. “If it makes you feel better,” he says teasingly cynical, and finally makes a move of his own, sliding his hand along Jesus’s ribs to his waist. The heat of his body soaks through his clothing and into Malcolm’s palms.

The hand on his cheek shifts, and Malcolm feels the steady thud of Jesus’s heart rate kick up as the man’s fingers curl under his chin to tip his face. He drags his teeth over his lip before parting his mouth, another soft laugh falling into the air between them at the absurdity of things as Jesus leans in to kiss him. It takes a few tries before either of them fully commits to it, before the nudge of their mouths together becomes anything more than a fumbling brush of lips.

They certainly don’t kiss alike, Malcolm thinks as he opens to the soft flick of Jesus’s tongue. If anything Jesus kisses a lot like JT, all fluttering licks between gently sucking at his lip. He’s a bit more assertive and handsy from the get-go though, his palm rubbing along Malcolm’s neck and his other hand untucking Malcolm’s shirt to slide greedily beneath.

“Let’s get naked,” Jesus murmurs into his mouth.

The guy doesn’t need to ask twice. Malcolm responds by yanking Jesus’s shirt loose and helping haul it up, chasing the kiss after Jesus has tugged it off overhead and is busy shaking it free of his arms. Another wave of body heat greets his hands, enough that Malcolm’s fingers must feel cold as ice as he explores acres of newly-bared skin.

“Well?” Jesus asks, glancing down at his chest as he starts working the buttons of Malcolm’s shirt open. “Are we still twins?”

“Close enough,” Malcolm says, brow cocked as he assesses their musculature. Jesus is slightly more lean—probably because he doesn’t travel with several competitive people who like to use bodyweight exercises as bonding time—and his chest is scattered with a bit more hair. The trail down the centerline of his body starts at his xiphoid process, slightly curled and shades darker than the length of his hair. Malcolm traces it with the backs of his fingers. “So, have you thought about how this is going to go?”

“You mean who tops if we have sex?”

“That, and what you really want out of this,” Malcolm says. He slips out of his shirt and tosses it to hang over the back of a chair. It might not be narcissism, might simply be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but while Malcolm is blessed with both a casual attitude towards sex and steady companionship, Jesus, he suspects, only has one of those. “Is it just the sex?”

“I’m versatile, so speak up if you have a preference,” Jesus says. His hair cascades into his face as he looks down to start undoing his belts and his pants. He seems amused as he glances up between divesting himself of a few well-hidden knives. “And I’m not looking for a boyfriend, but if it’s good, and Gregory—or Maggie—lets your group stick around, I wouldn’t mind a long-term hookup.” 

“Oh, it’ll be good,” Malcolm promises with a smirk as he undoes his boots and starts to shuck his own pants. Once he’s stripped to his underwear, he finds himself hit with a sudden bout of nerves and a sort of shyness he hasn’t experienced since he’d left his teens. After boarding school, he’d never been particularly self-conscious about the size of his cock, but this is a special circumstance, and his fingers tremble as he pushes down his shorts. He’s not hard yet, but Jesus is, and well, there is certainly no comparison there. He stares. “And I, uh, I’m more of a bottom. Which I think is going to work in my favor.”

It’s not like Jesus is hung like a porn star, or even as big as his lovers, but being comparatively average himself and with how little he and Jesus vary in frame, it’s a sight. 

“I take it you’re not a grower,” Jesus says, an expression that somehow manages to be both faintly smug and somewhat apologetic at the same time.

“Not really,” Malcolm says. He runs his fingers through his hair for lack of anything better to do with his hands as he and Jesus simply stare at one another. He does thicken up further under the scrutiny—his skin prickling from the lustful heat underlying Jesus’s gaze as he surveys the whole of Malcolm shamelessly. 

“Let me just…” Jesus says and sinks down to his knees before Malcolm has a chance to react. He moves with remarkable grace and control, the motion fluid as he settles in place. He flips his hair over his shoulder and grins up at Malcolm before taking hold of Malcolm’s dick, angling it to the side to drag a long, wet lick all the way to the tip.

Malcolm rocks up on his toes, his hand immediately falling atop the crown of Jesus’s head.

“You can pull my hair, if you want; lots of people like to, and I don’t mind,” Jesus says, matter-of-factly. He tilts his head and flashes a quick smile before flicking his tongue out to tease the head of Malcolm’s cock. He looks as if he’s about to say something else before discarding the thought in favor of wetting his lips and taking Malcolm in his mouth.

Jesus hums a moan as his lips slide down Malcolm’s length. His belly goes taut with anticipation and his extremities go weak. The wet sucking heat is so firm around him it feels like he’s filling to expand the whole of Jesus’s mouth. Malcolm echoes the moan, the sound reverberating between them in the thick evening air until Jesus starts to pump his fist and his mouth in time, and then—

Malcolm forgets how to breathe as he watches Jesus staring back up at him, cheeks hollowed, a smug deviousness in his pale gaze as his head bobs.

Is this how _he_ looks when JT is staring down at him? When he’s showing off and not just kneeling there mouth open and tongue out, begging to get his face fucked.

Maybe Jesus recognizes that he’s feeling a little shell-shocked, because the man pulls off and sits back on his heels.

“You good?” he asks. One brow arches upward inquisitively.

Malcolm smiles softly. It’s usually him doing the checking in with his partners. “Yeah,” he says. “I’m good.”

Jesus licks his teeth before diving back in, his gaze going heavy-lidded this time with the same sort of pleasure, Malcolm suspects, that he himself gets from having a cock in his mouth. Malcolm closes his eyes briefly, sinking into the pure sensation of being worshipped by a warm mouth, fingers slipping into the soft strands of Jesus’s hair.

He doesn’t tighten his hold, even though when he’s sucking dick, he loves the feeling of a hand fisted in his hair, knuckles curled close to the roots and guiding him towards the right rhythm. He luxuriates in the texture, instead, the way it slips through his fingers like silk.

Would his hair feel like this if Dani would let him grow it out? Would it fade similarly in the sun and go from deep chestnut to that same tawny brown?

He’s still got his fingers threaded in Jesus’s hair when the man slows and stops. When he rises and presses his body against Malcolm’s in a long line. Their hips align perfectly, mouths slotting together again without a whisper of hesitation. With a wordless nudge, Malcolm moves backward, breaking the kiss only long enough to eye the table that wobbles on thin metal legs when he bumps against it.

“Don’t worry,” Jesus says into Malcolm's mouth, his lips stretching into a smile between licks, “if it can hold Daryl, it can hold you.”

So, the pair are definitely fucking, Malcolm thinks dimly as Jesus shoves the laundry basket aside to make room. The laminate wood is cold under his ass as he scoots himself up on it, guided into place by Jesus’s sure hands on his thighs.

He feels weirdly exposed when Jesus steps away and skims a look over him head to toe. For a moment, he hears Negan’s sly whisper echo in his skull: _Him, I’d put face down, but you, darlin’, you’re twice as pretty…_

Jesus pushes his hair back, and Malcolm wrestles with the uncomfortable feeling of thinking that no, he’s not twice as pretty as this man who looks so very much like him. He knows objectively that people find him very attractive and has certainly used it to his advantage many, many times, but he’s never been able to honestly see it in the mirror. All he’s ever seen in his reflection are the things beneath his skin: the flesh and blood borne of a killer, the failures and faults in his memory.

But if this gets anywhere close to how others see him? A hot flush of embarrassment stains his skin as Jesus tosses an easy smile at him and flips open a cabinet to reach in to grab a can of Crisco. “Not allergic are you?” he asks, and when Malcolm shakes his head, he peels off the lid and flicks it into the sink. He dips his fingers in and drops the can on the table as he returns, wasting no time in finding Malcolm’s hole with a firm but gentle touch as he takes another kiss.

They never quite close their eyes, reading each other’s expressions as their mouths meet and part, as Jesus’s fingers slip inside Malcolm and they both shiver when it makes his thighs shake and his belly tighten.

“So, maybe this _is_ a little narcissistic, in the classical sense,” Malcolm admits, falling back as Jesus works him open and his body begs for more. The table shakes under his weight and his stomach drops out, but the swooping sensation flees in the wake of the clever stroke of Jesus’s fingers inside him. “Fuck, but that feels good.”

“It’s about to feel a whole lot better,” Jesus tells him, lining up between his spread thighs.

Malcolm’s jaw falls open as Jesus pushes into him, overwhelmed by the stretch of that first endless thrust that makes the switch flip in his head, entirely. The one that sweeps his attention away from the throbbing need in his cock to that deeper, more satisfying pleasure that wells up inside him. Jesus’s palms stroke up and down Malcolm’s thighs, rubbing heat into quivering muscles as he eases into a slow rhythm. When he’s sure that everything is smooth and easy, he hooks his arms under Malcolm’s knees and folds over him, hair sliding off his shoulders to curtain around them.

“How do you like it?” he asks.

“This is perfect,” Malcolm says dreamily. He lets the whole of his body relax, going soft and pliant as he slips his arms around Jesus. His hands flatten against the flex of muscles along the man’s spine, feeling the echo of each thrust into him rippling along the column of Jesus’s back. He grins and stops worrying about the shake of the table beneath him. “It’s perfect.”

Jesus briefly extracts one arm in order to flip his hair all to one side and dip down to put his mouth to Malcolm’s neck. “Good,” he murmurs, teeth dragging up the column of Malcolm’s neck before nipping lightly at his ear.

A shiver cascades through Malcolm at the warm gust of breath and a quiet moan, and he can feel the man’s smile when he echoes it and drops his head back to expose his neck for more.

Other things he hasn’t experienced in a long time: a partner who understands that, sometimes, being fucked isn’t about chasing an orgasm. That the pleasure itself is more than enough.

For JT and Gil both, it’s always so important for them to see him come, to know they’ve gotten him off, too. It’s not rooted in prideful power the way it is in Negan; it’s partly being so focused on their dicks they can’t imagine any other kind of pleasure.

JT, he thinks, is also the sort of lover who likes to know he’s making his partner feel good and might someday ask what it feels like—to want to know enough that he’ll get over the last of his macho bullshit and try bottoming, at least once. And Malcolm suspects that Gil’s insistence is also entwined with a bit of guilt he hasn’t fully worked through yet, a deep-seated and unspoken worry that he’s taking advantage of Malcolm, no matter the assurances passed to him in the dark.

But this… the soft brush of lips on his neck and the steady rhythm of Jesus’s cock plunging into him asks nothing of him, at all.

Malcolm pants lightly, his breath naturally falling into a counterpoint to the sound their bodies make and the faint squeak of the table legs. The flickering, tingling pleasure spreads to consume him, radiating through the whole of his body, turning the sensation of being filled into pure bliss. He groans, biting back some of the sound when he wants to just let it pour unbidden from his throat, shameless like he’d been in Sanctuary.

As if reading his mind, Jesus says, “You don’t have to be so quiet,” his mouth skimming across Malcolm’s cheek, the feather brush of his beard light and tickling. “I rarely am when I’m getting fucked.”

“Maybe next time,” Malcolm says, letting Jesus swallow the soft, needy moan that tumbles between them.

Jesus grins and gives Malcolm one last sucking kiss before he stops and straightens. “I’ll hold you to that,” he says. He gathers up his hair, working it into a quick loose braid simply to get it out of the way before he catches Malcolm’s knees again. He doesn’t drop back down over Malcolm when he starts to move again, just skids his legs apart slightly and pulls Malcolm towards him, easily carrying Malcolm’s weight as he hangs off the edge of the table.

“Five minutes like this maybe, or I’ll need a breather,” Jesus tells him, fucking into him harder this way.

“Come whenever you want, it’s good, so good. It’s perfect,” Malcolm murmurs, dazed and babbling. He stares up at Jesus, his limbs electric, his whole body thrumming. He reaches a hand out to let his knuckles drift down Jesus’s front, settling low on Jesus’s belly as the man’s hips snap and drive his cock deep inside Malcolm’s body. “I just want to feel it.”

The hands curled beneath his knees and around his thighs tighten their grip, and Malcolm drops his own hands to catch at the edge of the table and hold there as Jesus fucks into him. The pleasure radiating through his body ebbs and flows like a tide, sometimes blissful and sometimes thrilling, but it’s the connection between them right now that makes Malcolm feel like he never actually wants this to end.

It verges on the same wonderful sort of bond he shares with each of his partners, the way they can enjoy one another’s pleasure so fully when one of them tips over the edge. Malcolm shudders when it happens, when Jesus’s eyes screw shut and he curls forward, when the familiar shape of his own face twists towards pleasure and Malcolm finds himself gasping and grinning and succumbing to the reverent echo of it.

For a time, they simply stare at one another, no words exchanged and only a few shaky, sated smiles. When they pull apart, Jesus carefully lowers Malcolm’s legs down and makes sure he has his balance before stepping away. He grabs a small hand towel out of the laundry basket to wipe off his dick and tosses it to Malcolm. “If you’ve changed your mind about wanting to come,” he says, and flicks his eyes meaningfully at Malcolm’s cock. “Happy to get you hard again and finish you off.”

Swaying on weak legs, Malcolm declines graciously as he cleans the precome off his belly, then stoops to retrieve his clothes. “I enjoyed that more than I expected to,” he says.

Jesus pulls his underwear back on and leans a hip against the counter. He untangles his hair from its makeshift braid as he watches Malcolm dress. “If your friend Gil has a hard time convincing Maggie, I know who can convince her.”

“Do you think tomorrow is too soon to force a vote?”

“No. It needs to happen, and the sooner it happens, the sooner we can prepare for what’s to come.”

Malcolm glances at the door. Since this impromptu hookup isn’t the sort that invited cuddling after, he’d intended to gracefully duck out, but on the other hand it’s possible that the shared intimacy might make Jesus a little more willing to open up to him. “Actually, do you mind telling me a little bit more about what’s going on between Hilltop, Alexandria, and Negan’s group? I’ve gotten a general sense of things from Maggie and some of the others, but I’d love to hear your take.”

As expected, he senses Jesus’s wariness for the sake of caution. With how restrained he’d been in Gregory’s office, it's likely he prefers to either filter information through someone else or to not divulge things until it becomes necessary. Malcolm can relate. He and Dani both often hold things a little too close to the vest, as well.

“We can always do this after the vote,” Malcolm suggests instead.

“No, you’re right. If you’re going to stay and help us, you should know what we’re up against. Have a seat.”

They talk for hours, and when finally Malcolm is slipping back into Barrington House to rejoin the others, he is both somber and hopeful.

“Gil got Maggie to say yes. How’d it go with Jesus?” Dani murmurs, curling close to him when he slips into bed beside her.

“Very different than I anticipated. We can talk in the morning.”

“Okay,” she says, though the glitter of her eyes in the low light says she has questions and is awake enough to want to know more now.

“Go back to sleep,” he urges, although he stays awake himself until her breathing evens out again and deepens. Until he’s lulled into dark dreamlessness by the hushed sounds of all of the people he loves, safe and surrounding him.

*

Unlike Gregory, most of Hilltop is up with the sun, quick to get to the work of the day. So, when there’s enough of a consensus and the lockbox and chits are set up for the vote, he’s several hours behind any chance he might have had to talk folks out of holding a new election.

“This is preposterous,” he mutters from his seat on the porch. He keeps shifting, crossing and uncrossing his legs and glowering at the residents who line up to receive their tokens and cast their vote.

Seated in a chair a few feet away from him, Maggie remains unruffled and doesn’t respond to any of Gregory’s increasingly frustrated protests about the democratic system that he himself talked into place. Every so often, between marking the hands of people exiting the makeshift voting booth, Jesus casts a glance towards the porch as if he expects trouble to break out.

“How badly do you think he’ll lose?” JT asks.

Standing beside him, Malcolm clasps his hands together. From their vantage point on the sidelines, with the number of residents who have avoided eye contact with their current leader it’s already clear that it’s going to be a landslide victory for Maggie. “By enough of a margin that we’re going to need to keep a close eye on Gregory afterwards.”

JT raises a brow. “You think he’s the type?”

“I think he’s grown accustomed to a certain lifestyle, and that’s about to be taken away from him.”

“Maybe after you got out of that Sanctuary place, we should’ve taken the chance to move on. Still could, you know,” JT says. He slides his sunglasses on and folds his arms over his chest. “Wouldn’t be the first wife to skip town and never look back.”

Malcolm leans fondly against him. Despite the grumbling, he’s in it for the long-haul, just as the rest of them. He turns his attention away from the vote to where Gil, Dani, and Edrisa are helping staff the guard posts atop the wall. “You’re never going to let me forget that I ‘married’ that man, are you?”

“Hell no. You shack up with some fascist psycho for a week, and he gets to see you prance around in booty shorts while the rest of us, who’d be willing to make an honest man out of you, only get a revolution? Where’s the love?”

The surprised burst of Malcolm’s laughter turns heads, but as the smile is fading from his face, he turns his face up at JT. “Wait a minute, did you just ask me to marry you?”

“If you’ll have us. We discussed it last night while you were off boning your evil twin, which, you know, Edrisa was right. It’s kinda hot.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

JT’s brow quirks. “Yes, hopefully. ‘Cause this place has a blacksmith, and it turns out, he knows how to make rings.”

Stunned, Malcolm slips his hand into JT’s elbow. There might be a war brewing, but the idea of settling down here... of making space for a real life again full of joy and community and hope for the future?

“Yes,” Malcolm says. “Of course, yes.”

**Author's Note:**

> Read more of my [Prodigal Son fics](https://archiveofourown.org/works?utf8=%E2%9C%93&commit=Sort+and+Filter&work_search%5Bother_tag_names%5D=Prodigal+Son+%28TV+2019%29&user_id=ponderosa121), or talk to me about this twink getting wrecked on Twitter [@ponderosa121](https://twitter.com/ponderosa121) or on Discord in [Prodigal Son Trash](https://discord.gg/fQaRgBD).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[ART] Haven't you always wondered?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27619142) by [Ponderosa (ponderosa121)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ponderosa121/pseuds/Ponderosa)




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